Manuals  of  Faitii  ahd  Di 

NO    1 


THE  FATHERHOOD 


EMAV    AD/\'^V- 


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V,  I 


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JH annals  of  JFaitI)  anti  ^Dutp. 

EDITED    BY    REV.  J.   S.   CANTWELL,   D.D. 


A  SERIES  of  short  books  in  exposition  of  prominent  teachings 
of  the  Universalist  Church,  and  the  moral  and  religious 
obligations  of  believers.  They  are  prepared  by  writers  selected  for 
their  ability  to  present  in  brief  compass  an  instructive  and  helpful 
Manual  on  the  subject  undertaken.  The  volumes  will  be  affirmative 
and  constructive  in  statement,  avoiding  controversy,  while  specifically 
unfolding  doctrines. 

The  Manuals  of  Faith  and  Duty  are  issued  at  intervals  of 
three  or  four  months.     Uniform  in  size,  style,  and  price. 

I.     THE  FATHERHOOD   OF   GOD. 

By  Rev.  J.  Coleman  Adams,  D.D.,  Chicago. 

II.     JESUS   THE   CHRIST. 

By  Rev.  S.  Crane,  D.D.,  Norwalk,  O. 

III.     REVELATION. 

By  Rev.  I.  M.  Atwood,  D.D.,  President  of  the  Theological 
School,  Canton,  N,  Y. 

IV.     CHRIST  IN  THE  LIFE. 

By  Rev.  Warren  S.  Woodbridge,  Adams,  Mass. 

V.     SALVATION. 

By  Rev.  Orello  Cone,  D.D.,  President  of  Buchtel  College, 
Akron,  O. 

VI.     THE   BIRTH   FROM   ABOVE. 

By  Rev.  Charles  Pollen  Lee,  Charlestown,  Mass. 

No.  VII.  of  this  series  will  be  "  The  Saviour  of  the  World," 
by  Rev.  C.  E.  Nash,  Akron,  O.  Other  volumes  and  writers  will 
be  announced  hereafter.        


published  by  the 

Universalist  Publishing  House, 

BOSTON,    MASS. 
Western  Branch:    69  Dearborn  Street,  Chicago. 


0^ 

iHanuals  of  Jaitl)  anti  Sutg* 

No.  I. 


^^W  OF  Pmce}^ 


THE 


^' 


OCT  13  1920 


FATHERHOOD    OF   GOD. 


BY 


iX 


REV.  JOHN  COLEMAN  ADAMS,  D.D. 


OUR    FATHER   WHO   ART    IN    HEAVEN." 


THIRD   EDITION. 


BOSTON: 

UNIVERSALIST   PUBLISHING  HOUSE. 

1890. 


Copyright,  1888, 
By  the  Univeesalist  Publishing  House. 


tHnfbersftg  ^xtss: 
John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge. 


CONTENTS. 


« 

SEcnoN  Page 

I.    Relation  of  the  Doctrine  to  Revelation  6 

II.    The  Old  Testament  Teaching      ....  7 

III.  The  Doctrine  of  Our  Lord     .....  11 

IV.  The  Apostolic  Doctrine 18 

V.    The  Doctrine  of  Adoption 25 

VI.    The  Teaching  of  the  Fathers      ....  32 

VII.    Divine  Fatherhood  and  Divine  Love    .     .  38 

VIII.    Fatherhood  and  Human  Depravity  ...  51 

IX.    Fatherhood  and  the  Problem  of  Evil     .  57 

X.    Fatherhood  and  Retribution 64 

XI.    The     Divine     Fatherhood    and    Human 

Sorrow 74 

XII.    Divine  Fatherhood  and  Human  Destiny  .  83 
XIII.    The    Divine     Fatherhood    and    Human 

Conduct 91 


E\)z  best  name  62  ^Wl  ^^  ^aw  t!)ink 
of  ©otJ  10  iFatj^er.  Jit  is  a  lobing,  sinect, 
f}eart-toucf)ins  name ;  for  tje  name  of  jFatfjer 
10,  m  its  nature,  full  of  mborn  slneetnesa 
antj  comfort. 

Martin  Luther. 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 


"  'T^HE  fatherly  relation  and  purpose  of  God 
A  toward  men,"  said  Thomas  Erskine,  "  is 
the  fundamental  revelation  of  Christianity."  In 
that  sentence,  the  spiritually-minded  Scot  an- 
nounced the  growing  faith  of  his  own  day  and 
of  ours.  This  great  fact  of  the  Divine  economy 
is  the  corner-stone  of  the  Christian  system.  It 
was  the  end  and  aim  of  the  unfolding  revelation 
which  God  made  to  the  nation  to  whom  He  com- 
mitted the  truth  concerning  His  nature  and  His 
disposition.  It  is  a  truth  which  was  perceived 
with  a  growing  clearness  as  the  work  of  revela- 
tion proceeded ;  aijd  the  inspiring  idea  in  the 
mind  of  Him  in  whom  that  work  culminated,  is 
the  fatherhood  of  God  and  man's  sonship  to  Him. 
All  the  truths  which  Jesus  Christ  gave  to  man 
have  their  root  in  this  fundamental  truth ;  all 
the  Saviour's  teaching  rests   at  last  upon  this 


6  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF   GOD. 

conception  of  God.  And  every  fact  of  Christ's 
dealings  with  men  is  tinged  with  a  reflection 
caught  from  the  brightness  of  this  radiant  verity 
of  the  spiritual  universe. 

I.  —  Relation  op  the  Doctrine  to  Revelation. 

In  saying  that  the  truth  of  the  Divine  father- 
hood was  gradually  made  known  to  men,  we  but 
follow  the  teaching  which  the  most  distinguished 
and  trustworthy  defenders  of  the  faith  assert. 
The  course  of  revelation  was  progressive.  There 
is  a  steady  advance  in  the  announcement  of 
Divine  truth,  from  the  earliest  statements  of  the 
law,  down  to  the  universal  principles  made  known 
by  Jesus  Christ.  As  Dr.  George  P.  Fisher  says : 
"  It  is  plain  that  the  religious  consciousness,  or 
the  general  type  of  religious  ideas  and  feelings, 
rises  higher  and  higher  as  we  pass  from  one 
epoch  to  another  of  Hebrew  history.  Only  by 
degrees  did  that  which  was  latent  in  the  relation 
assumed  by  God  toward  men,  come  to  the  light. 
.  .  .  That  Christianity  is  a  higher  stage  in  the 
process  of  revelation,  the  New  Testament  leaves 
us  no  room  for  doubt."  ^  Or  as  Canon  Row  says  : 
1  Beginnings  of  Christianity,  pp.  7,  9. 


THE  FATHERHOOD   OF   GOD.  7 

"  Christianity  ...  is  a  plant  which  has  grown 
in  a  succession  of  gradual  stages  until  its  culmi- 
nation in  Jesus  Christ."  ^  Hence  we  shall  not 
look  for  the  same  clear  grasp  of  the  fact  in  the 
minds  of  the  Old  Testament  writers  that  we  shall 
find  in  the  souls  of  those  on  whom  inspiration  had 
fallen  in  later  days.  Nevertheless,  the  Old  Tes- 
tament does  certainly  contain  assertions  of  the 
nature  of  God's  relation  to  man  and  man's  rela- 
tion to  God,  which  serve  as  the  lower  courses  in 
the  rising  structure  of  revealed  truth,  uncontra- 
dicted by  later  disclosures. 

II.  —  The  Old  Testament  Teaching. 

This  fact  gives  great  significance  to  the  pas- 
sages in  the  Old  Testament  which  touch  upon 
this  relation  of  the  Creator  to  humanity.  The 
record  of  the  creation  is  couched  in  the  phrase 
which  colors  all  Christian  thought.  "Let  us 
make  man  in  our  image,  after  our  own  like- 
ness. ...  So  God  created  man  in  His  own 
image."  2  In  what  this  likeness  or  image  con- 
sists, we  may  discuss  farther  on ;  but  it  is 
to  be  noted  at  this  point  that  the  illumination 

1  Bampton  Lectures,  1877,  p.  3.  2  Genesis  i.  26,  27. 


8  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

which  was  sufficient  to  reveal  this  relation  of 
God  to  man  was  not  enough  to  stamp  it  with 
the  name  of  fatherhood.  The  fact  on  which 
that  relationship  rests  was  discerned,  but  not 
the  real  nature  of  the  bond  between  the  Creator 
and  the  creature.  That  was  to  await  the  coming 
of  a  clearer  vision. 

But  whatever  may  have  been  the  nature  of 
this  image  and  likeness  of  God,  it  is  clear  that 
it  was  not  lost  in  the  sin  of  our  progenitor, 
inasmuch  as  in  a  later  age,  long  after  the  pri- 
meval sin,  long  after  the  curse  was  pronounced 
against  it,  it  was  made  the  ground  of  the  Divine 
denouncement  of  murder.  "  Whoso  sheddeth 
man's  blood,  by  man  shall  his  blood  be  shed; 
for  in  the  image  of  God  made  He  man."  ^  It 
is  impossible  to  evade  the  force  of  this  pas- 
sage. It  can  have  no  meaning  whatever  except 
upon  the  assumption  that  the  image  of  God  still 
persists  in  the  human  soul,  making  a  human  life 
a  sacred  thing,  retaining,  even  though  corrupt 
and  fallen,  the  essential  nature  in  which  the 
race  was  formed.  That  single  passage  is  fatal 
to  all  that  false  view  of  human  nature  which 
has  tinctured  the  anthropology  of  the  Christian 
1  Genesis  ix.  6. 


THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD.  9 

Church  for  fourteen  hundred  years.  It  is  an 
impregnable  text,  standing  between  the  truth 
of  man*s  perpetual  kinship  to  God  by  virtue  of 
the  Divine  image  in  which  he  subsists,  and  the 
assaults  of  those  who  would  declare  him  a 
spiritual  orphan. 

The  same  must  be  said  of  another  word  out  of 
the  mouth  of  the  great  law-giver  of  Israel.  It  is 
one  of  those  rare  and  occasional  utterances  of 
the  earlier  men  of  God,  which  go  to  show  that 
the  idea  of  the  universal  fatherhood  was  strug- 
gling through  the  darkness  of  their  time,  —  a 
foregleam  of  the  fuller  revelation  yet  to  come. 
In  the  song  of  Moses  he  uses  these  remarkable 
words,  "  Do  ye  thus  requite  the  Lord,  0  foolish 
people  and  unwise  ?  is  not  He  thy  father  that 
hath  bought  thee  ?  hath  He  not  made  thee  and 
established  thee  ? "  ^  This  is  not  an  address  to 
saints,  nor  to  those  who  by  their  devotion  had 
secured  the  right  to  any  special  claim  of  son- 
ship;  for  in  the  very  verse  preceding  Moses 
has  called  those  at  whom  this  inquiry  is  aimed, 
"  a  perverse  and  crooked  generation." 

And  in  the  same  tone  does  Isaiah,  speaking  in 
Jehovah's  name,  say, "  Hear,  0  heavens,  and  give 

1  Deuteronomy  xxxii.  6. 


10  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

ear,  0  earth :  for  the  Lord  hath  spoken.  I  have 
nourished  and  brought  up  children,  and  they 
have  rebelled  against  me."^  If  that  relation- 
ship was  still  perpetuated  after  years  of  re- 
bellion, sinfulness,  and  spiritual  alienation  from 
God,  and  its  recognition  authorized,  it  would 
not  seem  to  have  been  utterly  sundered  by  the 
fall.  Still  further  evidence  of  the  growing  sense 
of  God's  fatherhood  appears  in  the  words  of  the 
prophet  Malachi,  where  he  speaks  for  Jehovah 
to  Israel,  and  says, "  A  son  honoureth  his  father, 
and  a  servant  his  master :  if  then  I  be  a  father, 
where  is  mine  honour?  and  if  I  be  a  master, 
where  is  my  fear  ?  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts  unto 
you,  0  priests,  that  despise  my  name."^  And 
there  is  an  evidence  of  the  connection  in  the 
minds  of  these  later  prophets  of  the  fact  of 
creation  with  the  truth  of  God's  universal  father- 
hood in  that  other  passage  from  the  book  of 
Malachi :  "  Have  we  not  all  one  Father  ?  hath 
not  one  God  created  us  ? "  ^  That  is  not  said  of 
regenerate  men,  but  of  those  *  who  have  not  kept 
God's  ways.  And  it  shows  beyond  question  that 
in  the  mind  of  this  prophet  the  fatherhood  of 

1  Isaiah  i.  2.  2  Malachi  i.  6. 

8  Ibid.  ii.  10.  4  Ibid.  9. 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF   GOD.  11 

God  was  coextensive  with  His  creatorship  over 
souls. 

in.  —  The  Doctrine  op  Our  Lord. 

But  the  thought  of  fatherhood  is  still  germi- 
nal, and  its  development  and  application  in  all 
its  tender  and  beautiful  phases  was  reserved  for 
a  greater  than  this  prophet. 
,  Dr.  Geikie,  in  his  Life  of  Christ,  strikingly 
reiterates  the  words  quoted  from  Thomas  Ers- 
kine  in  the  beginning  of  this  book,  when  he  says 
that  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  Jesus  makes  a 
new  era  for  man.  "  He  rises  above  his  age  and 
announces  a  common  Father  of  all  mankind, 
and  one  spiritual  ideal  in  resemblance  to  Him."  ^ 
And  Dr.  Phillips  Brooks,  in  the  Bohlen  Lec- 
tures for  1879,  on  the  "  Influence  of  Jesus,"  pro- 
nounces Christianity  a  personal  force,  behind 
which  there  lies  one  great  inspiring  idea,  name- 
ly, ''  The  fatherhood  of  God  and  the  childhood  of 
every  man  to  Him.  ...  To  reassert  the  father- 
hood and  childhood  as  an  unlost  truth,  and  to 
re-establish  its  power  as  the  central  fact  of  life ; 
to  tell  men  that  they  were,  and  make  them  act- 
ually be  the  sons  of  God,  —  that  was  the  purpose 

1  Life  of  Christ,  ch.  37. 


12  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

of  the  coming  of  Jesus  and  the  shaping  power  of 
His  life."  1  The  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  filled 
with  the  idea  of  the  fatherhood  of  God.  It  was 
addressed  to  a  "  multitude."  It  was  the  delivery 
of  a  law  to  humanity.  It  was  the  announcement 
of  a  new  standard  of  conduct  for  all  men.  And 
to  assert  that  the  frequent  references  to  God's 
fatherhood  in  that  discourse  mean  no  more  than 
His  fatherhood  to  the  elect  and  regenerate  is  to 
say  that  the  whole  sermon  is  no  more  than  an 
exhortation  to  those  who  have  entered  the  king- 
dom of  God,  and  is  not  to  be  applied  to  mankind 
at  large ;  because  the  references  to  the  father- 
hood are  so  interwoven  with  the  exhortations, 
that  to  limit  the  one  is  to  restrict  the  other. 
And  that  construction  the  sermon  will  not  bear. 
It  was  a  continuous  exhortation  to  men  as 
children  of  God  that  they  be  worthy  of  their 
Father.  Through  all  its  shining  sentences  there 
runs  this  golden  thread.  The  fact  of  God's 
fatherhood,  the  relationship  between  man  and 
his  Maker  is  urged  and  repeated  and  dwelt  upon 
as  the  ground  of  obedience,  of  sacrifice,  of  self- 
denial,  or  of  devotion.  The  sonship  of  man  is 
always  the  primary  fact.     The  reason  for  doing 

1  Influence  of  Jesus,  pp.  12,  14. 


THE   FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD.  13 

or  not  doing,  for  thought  or  for  action,  is  always 
this,  namely,  that  the  man  may  be  worthy  of  his 
origin, —  a  true  son,  and  not  a  disloyal  one,  ful- 
filling his  own  nature  and  destiny.  "  Be  ye 
therefore  perfect,"  he  says,"  even  as  your  Father 
is  perfect."  "  Love  your  enemies,"  in  order,  it 
appears,  "  that  ye  may  be  the  children  of  your 
Father  which  is  in  heaven."  "Let  your  light 
so  shine  before  men  that  they  may  glorify  your 
Father."  Is  it  needful  to  multiply  quotations  ? 
The  whole  Sermon  might  be  cited  as  teeming 
with  the  most  explicit  repetitions  in  various  keys 
and  many  modulations  of  this  recurrent  phrase 
of  Divine  truth,  which  is  all  summed  up  in  the 
prayer  He  put  into  the  mouth  of  humanity, 
whose  opening  words  are  "  Our  Father." 

That  prayer  has  been  by  universal  consent 
considered  the  prayer  for  all  classes  and  condi- 
tions of  men.  It  is  the  voice  of  human  nature 
crying  to  its  God.  In  the  words  of  Dr.  Plumptre, 
"  It  is  true  of  all  men.  .  .  .  Our  right  to  use 
that  name  is  no  peculiar  privilege  of  ours,  but  is 
shared  by  every  member  of  the  great  family  of 
God."  1  The  venerable  Dr.  Mark  Hopkins,  com- 
menting upon  these  words,  remarks  :  "  This  term 

1  Handy  Commentary,  vol.  i.  p.  78. 


14  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF   GOD. 

I  suppose  He  intended  to  authorize  all  men  to 
use,  and  that  in  the  use  of  it,  with  the  full  un- 
derstanding of  its  import,  there  is  implied  that 
image  of  God  in  which  man  was  created."  ^  To 
try  to  limit  the  scope  of  that  address,  compre- 
hending as  it  does  the  most  sacred  truth  ever 
unfolded  to  the  mind  of  man,  is  a  perversion  of 
the  Scripture  which  is  excusable  only  to  the 
blindest  prejudice. 

It  is  indeed  sometimes  argued  that  one  who 
from  the  heart  can  use  this  prayer  is  not  an 
"  alien,"  but  a  disciple ;  is  penitent,  is  a  seeker 
after  God,  and  so,  by  anticipation,  a  child  of 
God.  But  for  hundreds  of  years  the  Augusti- 
nian  theology  has  taught  that  no  man  is  entitled 
to  call  God  father  who  is  not  regenerate;  for 
only  regeneration  can  create  the  filial  bond. 
But  simply  to  be  penitent  is  not  to  be  restored. 
The  inquirer  is  not  a  convert;  discipleship  is 
not  regeneration.  To  meet  the  truth  of  God 
with  such  perverse  trifling  with  terms  of  the 
deeper  meaning  is  lamentable  if  done  in  igno- 
rance ;  is  culpable  if  done  through  premedita- 
tion to  maintain  a  cause.  For  in  those  words 
the   Saviour   of    mankind   thrust   in   upon   our 

1  Scriptural  Idea  of  Man,  p.  26. 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  15 

spiritual  consciousness  the  solemn  truth  that 
•we  are  by  our  very  natures  the  children  of  God, 
whose  image  we  sully  when  we  sin,  whose  grace 
we  abuse,  whose  love  we  grieve,  when  we  give 
our  souls  to  evil. 

Nor  is  this  the  only  discourse  of  our  Saviour's 
in  which  He  lays  upon  the  heart  of  man  this 
sacred  truth.  The  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son 
has  been  called  the  gospel  within  the  gospel,  so 
thoroughly  does  it  compress  within  itself  the 
significance  of  the  message  of  our  Saviour. 
And  nothing  can  be  made  of  its  touching  story 
except  the  fatherly  attitude  of  God  to  man,  and 
the  filial  nature  and  relationship  which  not  even 
transgression  can  rupture.  The  father  loves  that 
son  even  in  his  exile.  The  son  is  still  a  son, 
even  in  his  degradation.  What  better  type  could 
we  ask  of  man's  relations  to  his  Father,  which 
not  even  sin  can  break  nor  the  corruptions  of 
an  evil  life  annul  ?  What  finer  phrase  was  ever 
devised  to  express  the  essential  nature  of  repent- 
ance than  these  words  :  "  And  when  he  came  to 
himself?"  What  clearer  inculcation  could  we 
ask  of  the  truth  that  as  man  is  a  son  of  God  by 
no  act  of  his  own,  so  no  act  of  his  can  ever  cancel 
the  relationship;   but  that  even  in  his  deepest 


16  THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD. 

degradation  he  may  think  of  the  Heavenly  Father 
as  his  father  ?  What  stronger  appeal  could  we 
make  to  sinful  men  to  be  worthy  of  their  son- 
ship,  and  to  earn  and  accept  the  rejected  place 
to  which  they  are  entitled  ? 

Those  are  significant  words,  too,  which  Jesus 
uses  in  addressing  the  woman  of  Samaria,  who, 
being  only  an  alien  as  yet  and  a  stranger  even 
to  the  circle  of  Jewish  ideas,  as  well  as  a  soiled 
and  unregulated  nature,  is  yet  told  of  "  The 
Father  "  in  that  broad  and  inclusive  tone  which 
is  evidently  meant  to  make  her  feel  that  God  is 
her  father,  because  He  is  the  Father  of  all  flesh. 
"  Jesus  saith  unto  her,  Woman,  believe  me,  the 
hour  Cometh  when  ye  shall  neither  in  this  moun- 
tain nor  yet  at  Jerusalem  worship  the  Father. 
.  .  .  The  hour  cometh  and  now  is  when  the  true 
worshippers  shall  worship  the  Father  in  spirit 
and  in  truth  :  for  the  Father  seeketh  such  to 
worship  Him."  Here  is  a  term  used  broadly, 
as  if  in  the  Saviour's  mind  it  represented  an 
established  and  universal  relationship.  To  limit 
its  meaning  to  a  relation  to  the  saved,  would  be 
to  make  the  term  one  of  the  most  inappropriate 
that  could  be  used  to  this  unconverted  heathen. 
The  clear  intent  of  our  Lord  was  to  make  her 


THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD.  17 

feel  what  she  had  in  all  likelihood  never  dreamed 
before,  that  the  God  to  whom  the  varying  wor- 
ship of  Samaritan  and  Jew  was  rendered  was 
the  common  Father  of  both  peoples,  — ''  The 
Father"  of  all  men. 

What  we  learn  from  these  explicit  utterances 
of  the  Saviour,  we  infer  from  all  His  teaching 
and  His  bearing  toward  men.  He  treats  them 
all  as  children  of  the  one  Father,  lost,  indeed, 
exiled  from  home,  wanderers  in  a  strange  and 
alien  life,  degrading  the  powers  which  belong 
to  the  Lord  into  the  service  of  the  basest  ends, 
but  even  as  children  whom  the  Father  loves 
because  He  is  their  Father,  whom  He  seeks 
because  He  loves,  whom  He  will  find  because 
He  seeks.  There  are  no  finer  examples  of  the 
spirit  which  pervades  God's  moral  economy  and 
is  the  motive  of  His  dealings  with  His  evil  off- 
spring than  the  parables  of  the  Lost  Sheep  and 
of  the  Lost  Piece  of  Silver.  And  the  thought 
which  fills  both  of  them  is  of  an  ownership,  a 
right  and  title  in  the  thing  lost,  which  that  loss 
does  not  affect,  and  which  sends  the  owner  search- 
ing till  he  finds  what  he  seeks ;  and  grouped  as 
they  are  with  the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son, 
their  meaning  is  clear  as  day,  —  the  truth  that 
2 


18  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

God  seeks  men  to  save  them  because  He  is 
theirs  and  they  are  His ;  He  their  Father,  they 
His  children ;  dear  to  Him  in  spite  of  their  evil, 
precious  in  His  sight  in  spite  of  their  ruin ;  His 
by  right,  though  temporarily  given  over  to  the 
Devil ;  sons  still,  though  exiles  ;  true  sheep  of 
the  fold,  though  straying  and  forlorn  ;  stamped 
with  the  image  of  heaven,  though  trampled 
under  foot  in  the  rubbish  and  refuse  of  life. 

lY.  —  The  Apostolic  Doctrine. 

The  apostles  of  Jesus  Christ  were  not  slow  to 
grasp  their  Master's  meaning,  and  to  thrust  it  to 
the  front  in  dealing  with  the  world  they  now 
went  forth  to  convert.  In  various  ways,  accord- 
ing to  the  conditions  of  those  to  whom  they 
spoke,  they  enforced  the  truth  that  Jesus  Christ 
had  revealed  to  man,  —  the  fact  of  God's  father- 
hood, His  love,  and  His  compassion  for  man. 
And  whenever  this  thought  is  pressed  upon 
human  attention  it  is  always  urged  home  with 
the  special  appeal  that  men  shall  deport  them- 
selves as  sons,  and  not  as  strangers  to  their 
God.  The  truth  was  impressed  upon  Peter's 
mind  in  the  vision  of  the  sheet  let  down  from 


THE   FATHERHOOD  OF   GOD.  19 

heaven,  in  which  he  was  taught  that  a  Gentile  in 
God's  sight  was  of  equal  value  with  a  Jew,  —  a 
soul  to  be  saved,  a  child  to  be  reclaimed.  Paul 
preached  it  to  the  Athenians,  when  he  reminded 
them  that  "  we  are  the  offspring  of  God."  The 
offspring  resembles  the  parent.  And  Paul's  ar- 
gument with  the  Greeks  turns  upon  the  fact 
that  since  the  offspring  is  the  image  of  the 
parent,  the  son  is  the  likeness  of  the  father,  we 
being  in  the  likeness  of  God ;  because  His  chil- 
dren ought  not  to  think  of  Him  as  like  lifeless, 
unintelligent  "  gold,  silver,  or  stone."  Paul 
uses  the  same  thought  again  to  enforce  a  practi- 
cal measure  upon  the  Christian  church  when  he 
insists  upon  the  men's  praying  with  their  heads 
uncovered,  because  man  is  in  the  image  of  God, — 
an  argument  which  would  be  absolutely  without 
point  unless  Paul  meant  to  say  that  the  image 
still  remained  in  the  men  of  Corinth. 

In  the  epistles  especially  do  we  read  the  mind 
of  Paul  upon  this  point  in  unmistakable  clear- 
ness. To  him  there  is  but  one  thought  of  God, 
and  that  is  as  a  Father,  humanity  as  one  family, 
redemption  a  universal  work,  salvation  the  com- 
mon destiny  of  the  race.  And  whether  he  is 
bidding  the  Gentile  rejoice  in  his  membership  in 


20  THE  FATHERHOOD   OF   GOD. 

the  spiritual  family  or  urging  the  Jew  to  make 
good  his  descent  from  Abraham  by  an  inward 
sonship  to  God,  or  calling  on  his  Christian 
charges  to  be  glad  in  their  new  knowledge  of 
this  glorious  relationship  which  at  once  ennobles 
them  and  magnifies  God's  name,  Paul  is  always 
conscious  of  the  new  truth  which  has  been  re- 
vealed in  Christ  and  is  meant  for  every  creature  : 
"  To  us  there  is  but  one  God,  the  Father." 
That  name  to  him  is  the  only  sufficient  name  by 
which  to  designate  God ;  and  that  is  the  name 
revealed  through  Jesus  Christ.  And  he  is  em- 
phatic in  insisting  ^  that  the  Christian  should 
think  of  this  trait  as  the  peculiar  characteristic 
of  God,  as  He  was  revealed  in  Jesus. 

In  the  epistle  to  the  Ephesians^  Paul  makes 
use  of  the  same  phrase,  which  shows  that  it  is 
to  him  a  familiar  thought,  when  in  stating 
the  characteristics  of  Christian  faith  he  states  as 
one  of  its  articles :  "  One  God  and  Father  of 
all,  who  is  above  all,  and  through  all,  and  in 
you  all."  Undoubtedly  this  is  an  utterance  to 
Christians,  and  therefore  to  those  who  had  come 
to  a  knowledge  and  a  recognition  of  their  son- 
ship  and  were  trying  to  make  their  lives  con- 

^  1  Corinthians  viii.  6.  ^  Ephesians  iv.  6. 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  21 

form  to  their  lineage.  But  just  as  undoubtedly 
it  is  the  statement  of  a  truth  which,  though 
made  known  to  and  understood  only  by  the 
Christian  consciousness  of  that  day,  is  a  uni- 
versal fact,  true  of  and  for  all  men.  Spoken  to 
those  who  have  entered  into  the  enjoyment  of 
their  sonship  with  all  its  hallowed  privileges,  it 
is  yet  a  truth  which  applies  to  those  who  are  yet 
ignorant  of  its  inclusiveness,  and  careless  of  its 
import.  Dr.  Ellicott,  Bishop  of  Gloucester  and 
Bristol,  has  a  most  excellent  and  pertinent 
thought  upon  this  passage :  "  God  is  said  to  be 
the  '  Father  of  all.'  We  cannot  limit  this  im- 
mense fatherhood ;  although  undoubtedly  the 
context  shows  that  the  immediate  reference  is 
to  those  who  are  His  children  by  adoption  in 
Jesus  Christ.  The  Church  is  essentially  catholic, 
inheriting  by  special  gift  what  is  the  birthright 
of  all  humanity  ;  incapable  of  perfection  till  all 
be  drawn  into  that  closer  sonship,  yet  having 
neither  the  right  nor  the  desire  to  deny  that 
outside  His  pale  at  any  moment  the  wider  father- 
hood of  God  extends."  ^ 

But  we  may  not  neglect  another  view  of  our 
theme,  which  engaged  the  attention  of  the  sacred 
writers. 

1  Handy  Commentary. 


22  THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD. 

A  large  part  of  what  they  have  to  say  concerns 
itself  with  those  who  disobey  the  Divine  law,  and 
separate  themselves  from  the  Father's  love  and 
presence.  For  these  there  are  strong  and  search- 
ing words,  stern,  uncompromising,  bitter.  They 
are  called  "  aliens  "  and  "  strangers  "  and  "  for- 
eigners." They  are  pronounced  "  enemies."  They 
are  dismissed  as  "  bastards  and  not  sons."  They 
are  described  as  "  children  of  the  Devil,"  doing 
the  works  of  their  father,  the  Devil.  And  the 
question  is  asked.  How  are  we  to  reconcile  these 
terrible  phrases  with  the  teaching  that  all  men 
are  God's  children  ?  Are  these  to  be  called  the 
children  of  God,  with  an  inalienable  title  to  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  ?  Is  Judas  as  truly  a  child 
of  God  as  John  ?  Has  Nero  as  inalienable  a 
claim  on  God's  love  as  Paul  ?  Is  the  fatherhood 
of  God  extended  to  these  degraded,  depraved, 
rebellious,  and  utterly  vicious  creatures  as  fall 
under  the  denunciations  of  all  righteous  and  con- 
scientious men  ?  What  shall  be  said  to  these 
searching  questions  ? 

In  tlie  first  place,  it  is  to  be  remarked  that 
such  phrases  as  these  refer  not  to  the  native  and 
essential  nature  of  the  soul,  and  its  relation  back 
to  its  source,  but  to  an  acquired  character,  the 


THE  FATHERHOOD   OF   GOD.  23 

outcome  of  evil  choice  and  vicious  living.  There 
is  no  dispute  over  the  fact  of  sin,  nor  over  the 
ruinous  consequences  of  sin,  nor  over  the  es- 
trangement that  sin  creates  between  man  and 
God,  nor  about  the  injury  done  to  the  image  of 
God  imprinted  on  man's  nature.  These  are  facts 
of  human  experience.  And  there  are  no  words 
too  vigorous  and  scathing  to  describe  the  moral 
state  of  the  reprobate  and  sinful  soul.  Sin  does 
make  man  an  alien,  a  stranger,  and  a  foreigner 
toward  God.  It  cuts  him  off  from  the  enjoyment 
of  his  birthright.  It  interrupts  his  blessings,  and 
delays  his  inheritance  of  the  joys  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven.  But  it  does  not,  for  it  cannot,  alter 
man's  innate  and  constitutional  relation  to  God. 
The  creation  of  man  in  the  image  of  God 
means,  if  it  means  anything,  that  man  is  consti- 
tutionally in  the  likeness  of  his  Maker.  He  has 
in  him  all  the  capacities  of  a  true  son  of  God, 
—  capacities  which  sin  may  pervert,  corrupt,  de- 
prave, deaden,  but  not  destroy,  not  annihilate. 
And  those  capacities,  even  while  they  are  unful- 
filled, are  the  inalienable  claim  of  the  soul  to  the 
position  of  son  ship.  Is  not  your  babe  your  child  ? 
Must  he  grow  to  maturity,  and  learn  to  obey  and 
love  you,  before  he  is  your  son  ;  or  do  his  very 


24  THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD. 

capacities,  his  constitution,  his  germinal  charac- 
teristics, entitle  him  to  your  love,  your  care,  your 
oversight  as  a  father  ?  Does  a  man  disown  his 
offspring  and  refuse  to  acknowledge  them  as 
children  until  they  have  come  to  reflect  the  pa- 
rental virtues  ?  Are  they  deprived  of  the  privi- 
lege of  calling  him  their  father  until  they  are 
old  enough  and  disciplined  enough  to  give  a 
free  obedience  ?  Capacity  for  sonship  is  sonship, 
when  it  inheres  in  the  very  constitution  of  the 
offspring.  And  whatever  inheres  in  that  con- 
stitution cannot  be  lost  out  of  it,  except  by  the 
tinnihilation  of  life  itself. 

Moreover,  if  we  were  to  accept  the  assertion 
that  God  is  not  the  Father  of  those  who  have 
not  yet  come  to  love  Him,  we  involve  ourselves 
in  a  most  serious  difficulty.  God  creates  every 
new  soul  that  is  born  into  this  life.  It  is  a  fresh 
creation  from  the  Divine  Hand,  and  it  brings  with 
it  a  new  breath  from  God's  creative  spirit.  The 
old  answer  to  the  question,  "Who  made  you?" 
is  still  the  first  upon  our  lips.  "  It  is  He  that 
hath  made  us,  and  not  we  ourselves."  But  if 
God  makes  every  one  of  us.  He  either  makes  us 
in  His  image  or  not  in  His  image.  If  He  makes 
us  in  His  image,  then  He  makes  us  by  very  birth 


THE   FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD.  25 

and  constitution  His  children.  If  He  does  not 
make  us  in  His  image,  but  creates  us  in  total 
corruption  and  evil,  turning  naturally  and  in- 
evitably to  sin,  how  can  He  hold  us  guilty  for 
conforming  to  the  very  constitution  He  has  given 
us  ?  You  cannot  blame  a  dog  for  biting.  You 
cannot  blame  a  child  of  the  Devil,  born  so,  con- 
stituted so,  essentially  and  radically  and  totally 
inclined  to  the  works  of  the  Devil,  for  turning  to 
devilish  things. 

But  evidently  when  Jesus  says  to  the  Jews 
whom  He  would  rebuke,  "  Ye  are  of  your  father 
the  Devil,"  He  uses  the  phrase  only  in  that  figura- 
tive way  in  which  they  call  themselves  "  children 
of  Abraham."  They  were  exhibiting  a  malig- 
nant and  devilish  spirit,  and  in  so  far  were  prop- 
erly styled  the  children  of  the  Devil.  They  had 
not  recognized  their  true  kinship  to  God  by  a 
godly  behavior  ;  and  so  they  were  denying  their 
true  relation  and  assuming  a  kinship  of  disposi- 
tion and  character  to  Satan  himself. 

Y.  —  The  Doctrine  of  Adoption. 

But  there  is  still  more  to  be  said,  before  we 
have  fairly  stated  the  New  Testament  doctrine 


26  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

of  the  fatherhood.  There  is  no  doubt  a  special 
sense  in  which  this  relation  applies  to  the  obedi- 
ent child,  which  is  not  and  cannot  be  true  of 
the  disobedient.  It  is  a  common  habit  of  men 
to  say  of  one  who  repeats  in  himself  the  char- 
acter and  peculiar  personal  traits  of  his  father, 
"  You  are  your  father's  own  child."  The  mean- 
ing is  clear  enough.  Moral  likeness  is  a  real- 
ization of  what  the  natural  relationship  stands 
for;  and  so  the  moral  likeness  of  man  to  his 
Father  carries  into  effect  all  the  blessed  conse- 
quences of  his  sonship,  which  are  conditioned 
upon  his  obedience  and  love  for  their  full  be- 
stowment.  God  is  the  Father  of  all  souls.  But 
He  is  especially  the  Father  of  those  who  by  the 
birth  from  above  have  come  into  the  practice 
and  spirit  of  the  divine  life.  A  man  is  always 
God's  child  in  the  sense  that  he  is  made  in 
God's  image,  is  created  by  God's  love,  is  sus- 
tained by  His  care,  is  the  object  of  His  affection- 
ate providence  in  training  and  education.  But 
he  is  never  a  true  son,  a  good  son,  never  any- 
thing but  a  prodigal,  a  w^ayward,  unfaithful, 
false,  and  degenerate  son,  until  he  has  sought  to 
return  his  Father's  love,  and  render  to  Him  a 
filial  obedience.    And  so  while  God  is  the  Father 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  27 

of  all  souls,  He  stands  in  a  peculiarly  near  and 
tender  relationship  to  those  who  acknowledge 
their  sonship  and  perform  their  filial  duties. 
He  holds  this  attitude  too  by  virtue  of  the  same 
fact  which  makes  Him,  as  Paul  calls  Him, 
"  The  Saviour  of  all  men,  specially  of  those 
that  believe."  ^ 

Until  Christ  opened  the  minds  of  men  to  the 
transcendent  fact,  the  fatherhood  of  God  was  an 
unknown  truth.  They  lived  in  ignorance  of  it, 
or  with  the  most  shadowy  knowledge  of  it.  But 
when  He  who  bore  in  Himself  at  once  the  divine 
and  the  human  nature  unfolded  to  man  His  real 
standing  in  God's  sight  and  the  real  tie  by 
which  God's  heart  was  bound  to  Him,  He  brought 
a  new  motive  to  bear  upon  human  life,  and  re- 
vealed a  new  power  in  connection  with  it.  For 
by  the  knowledge  He  gave  them,  Jesus  Christ 
made  men  understand  whose  children  they  were  ; 
and  by  the  spirit  He  imparted  to  them  He 
helped  them  to  become  in  reality  what  they  nom- 
mally  already  were,  that  is,  the  sons  of  God. 
The  child  is  the  man  in  the  intent  of  his  Creator  ; 
but  he  has  yet  to  become  a  man  in  stature  and 
in  faculties.     In  a  sense,  and  in  a  very  true  and 

1  1  Timothy  iv.  10. 


28  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

literal  sense,  too,  he  has  yet  to  become  what  he 
already  is.  And  so  when  we  come  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  spiritual  life,  a  man  may  be  a  son  of 
God,  and  yet  reject  his  own  right  and  disown  his 
own  sonship.  And  it  is  only  where  he  has  accepted 
his  rights  and  acted  in  harmony  with  his  own  na- 
ture that  he  becomes  in  the  fullest  sense  a  son. 
That  is  the  meaning  of  John  when  he  writes  : 
"  He  came  unto  His  own,  and  His  own  received 
Him  not.  But  to  as  many  as  received  Him,  to 
tliem  gave  He  power  to  become  the  sons  of  God." 
Christ  came  to  His  own  countrymen,  kinsmen, 
brethren  in  the  commonwealth  of  Israel.  They 
received  Him  not.  But  others  did,  here  and  there 
one,  a  growing  number,  Jew  and  Gentile  indis- 
criminately, "  and  to  as  many  as  received  Him, 
to  them  gave  He  power  to  become  the  sons  of 
God,"  in  the  full  sense  of  a  consciousness  of  rela- 
tion and  a  new  life  based  upon  it.  This  is  the 
new  birth,  the  birth  from  above,  namely,  the  sense 
of  sonship  received  into  the  soul,  and  the  desire 
to  live  according  to  its  requirements.  It  is  the 
discovery  of  God's  relation  to  us,  and  the  desire 
to  realize  that  relationship  on  our  own  part.  It 
is  the  birth  within  us  of  the  dispositions  which 
flow  naturally  from  a  knowledge  of  our  sonship 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF   GOD.  29 

and  a  sense  of  its  duties,  its  privileges,  its  joys. 
And  it  is  this-  experience  which  raises  us  from 
a  merely  nominal  and  latent  sonship,  a  sonship 
inherent  but  undeveloped,  existing  but  unreal- 
ized, into  a  sonship  which  is  actual,  recognized, 
and  appropriated  by  the  soul. 

It  follows  that  no  man  can  become  a  son  of 
God  in  this  secondary  and  special  sense  until 
he  has  been  renewed  in  affections  and  in  will. 
As  long  as  he  persists  in  evil  he  is  cast  out  from 
the  presence  of  the  Father ;  he  takes  the  place 
of  an  alien  and  a  stranger.  And  he  never  can 
enter  into  the  possession  of  his  birthright  until 
by  a  change  of  heart,  a  disposition  born  from 
above,  he  seeks  the  things  which  God  loves  and 
turns  from  those  which  God  abhors. 

Now  this  change  involves  a  change  in  the 
soul's  relations  to  God,  and  of  God  to  the  soul ; 
hut  it  establishes  no  new  relationship.  God  was 
man's  Father  before,  as  He  is  now  ;  only  He  was 
the  Father  of  a  rebellious  and  defiant  child,  who 
had  given  himself  over  to  the  doing  of  all  unfilial 
things.  And  He  is  a  Father  still,  and  no  more 
than  that,  to  the  obedient  and  loving  child  who 
does  His  will  and  loves  His  law.  There  is  a 
change  of  relations^  hut  no  change  in  relationship. 


30  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

The  language  of  the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son 
is  decisive  upon  this  point.  The  Saviour  makes 
the  father  in  that  touching  story  refer  to  the 
wayward  one,  even  in  his  sins,  as  still  his  child. 
"  For  this  my  son  was  dead,  and  is  alive  again ; 
he  was  lost,  and  is  found."  He  was  a  lost  son, 
he  was  a  dead  son,  but  always  he  was  a  son  ; 
and  his  return,  his  restoration,  only  change  his 
relations  to  his  father  and  his  father's  relations 
to  him,  without  in  the  least  affecting  the  rela- 
tionship which  was  in  its  very  nature  unchange- 
able. Even  so  the  sinful  soul  does  not  by  its 
sins  destroy  its  relationship  to  God  nor  God's  re- 
lationship to  it.  It  only  brings  about  a  change 
of  relations  within  that  unchangeable  relation- 
ship. This  derangement  of  right  relations  be- 
tween God  and  Plis  sinning  child  must  continue 
as  long  as  the  sin,  and  no  longer.  But  in 
the  reconciliation  of  man  to  his  father  which 
comes  with  repentance  and  regeneration,  he  en- 
ters into  a  higher  and  better  relation  with  God, 
which  has  received,  in  the  apostolic  writings, 
the  name  of  "  adoption." 

Now  in  this  term,  for  whose  use  we  are  in- 
debted to  tlie  apostles,  we  touch  a  new  phase  of 
man's  life  with  God.     The  apostle  John,  besides 


THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD.  31 

the  words  already  quoted,  addresses  his  breth- 
ren in  Christ  in  these  words :  "  Behold  what 
manner  of  love  the  Father  hath  bestowed  upon 
us,  that  we  should  be  called  the  sons  of  God." 
Paul  declares  that  they  who  "  are  led  by  the 
spirit  of  God,  they  are  the  sons  of  God  ;  "  ^  that 
they  have  received  "the  spirit  of  adoption"  which 
gives  them  the  right  to  say,  "  Abba,  Father  ; "  2 
that  if  they  are  children,  "  then  [are  they] 
heirs  ; "  ^  that  if  they  become  pure  God  "  will  be 
a  father"  unto  them;^  and  he  assures  the  saints 
at  Ephesus  that  "  God  hath  predestinated  us  to 
the  adoption  of  children."  ^ 

In  these  and  like  passages  we  find  the  teach- 
ing that  there  is  a  phase  of  sonship,  an  exercise 
of  the  Divine  fatherhood,  which  belongs  espe- 
cially to  the  obedient  and  the  loyal,  —  those  who 
have  given  themselves  to  God ;  those  who  have 
returned  from  their  wanderings  in  transgression 
and  sin.  This  reinstatement  of  the  sinner  in 
the  favor  of  his  Father,  this  restoration  of  the 
blessings  from  which  sin  always  cuts  him  off,  is 
called  "  adoption."  It  involves  more  than  a  mere 
restoration  to  innocence.     Salvation  is  a  larger 

1  Romans  viii.  14.  2  ibid.  15.  3  Ibid.  17. 

*  2  Corinthians  vi.  17,  18.  &  Ephesians  i.  5,  6. 


32  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

word  than  mere  restoration  of  an  old  status.  It 
includes  the  removal  of  the  corruptions  and  de- 
pravities of  sin,  and  adds  to  it  the  induction  of  the 
soul  into  a  higher  spiritual  standing,  won  in  the 
long,  hard  struggle  with  sin,  —  the  bestowment 
of  a  new  disposition,  not  in  the  likeness  of  Adam, 
but  of  the  Christ.  We  may  not  dwell  on  this 
thought.  We  leave  it  with  a  citation  from  Dr. 
T.  J.  Crawford's  admirable  treatise  of  "  The 
Fatherhood  of  God."  He  says  :  "  In  the  car- 
rying out  of  this  process  of  restitution,  there 
are  high  and  potent  agencies  employed,  with 
which  we  can  scarcely  suppose  humanity  to  be 
brought  into  contact  without  having  all  its 
original  elements  not  only  restored  but  glo- 
riously elevated  and  transfigured,  insomuch  that 
far  more  than  ivas  lost  in  Adam  shall  be  gamed 
in   Christ:'  ^ 

YI.  —  The  TEAcmko  of  the  Fathers. 

It  would  utterly  transcend  the  limits  of  a 
single  thesis  to  develop  and  illustrate  this  doc- 
trine of  the  Scriptures  more  fully.  Enough  has 
been  done  in  tracing  the   development  of  the 

1  The  Fatherhood  of  God,  p.  141. 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  33 

thought  from  its  early  presentation  to  Israel 
down  to  its  joyful  acceptance  by  the  apostles 
of  our  Lord,  to  show  that  it  is  unquestionably 
the  great  and  transcendent  fact  of  revelation, 
the  radical  idea  of  the  gospel,  the  fruitful  stem 
from  which  successively  spring  forth  the  branch- 
ing doctrines  of  the  Christian  faith.  We  must 
pass  on  to  review  in  the  briefest  way  the  devel- 
opment of  the  doctrine  in  the  minds  of  the  later 
learners  at  the  feet  of  the  Christ,  whose  thought 
has  helped  to  develop  the  truths  of  Christianity 
into  their  more  formal  statements.  In  the  obscure 
period  of  the  apostolic  fathers,  we  have  but  scant 
means  of  tracing  the  progress  of  this  doctrine. 
But  we  know  that  Samt  Clement  of  Rome  ex- 
horted his  disciples  to  look  steadfastly  "  unto  the 
Father  and  Maker  of  the  whole  world."  The 
"  Epistle  to  Diognetus  "  foreshadows  the  spirit  of 
the  age  so  soon  to  follow.  The  writer  lays  espe- 
cial stress  upon  the  fact  that  man  may  imitate 
God,  because  God  has  made  him  in  His  own  im- 
age. "  For  God  has  loved  mankind,"  he  says, 
"  on  whose  account  He  made  the  world,  to  whom 
He  rendered  subject  all  the  things  that  are  in 
it,  to  whom  He  gave  reason  and  understanding, 
to  whom   alone   He  imparted  the   privilege   of 


34  THE  FxVTHERHOOD  OF   GOD. 

looking  upward  to  Himself,  whom  He  formed 
after  His  own  image,  to  whom  He  has  sent 
His  only  begotten  Son."  ^ 

Clement,  the  eminent  head  of  the  catechetical 
school  at  Alexandria,  held,  in  the  words  of 
Professor  Allen,  that  in  the  redemption  there  is 
"  no  readjustment  or  restoration  of  a  broken 
relationship  between  God  and  humanity,  but 
rather  the  revelation  of  a  relationship  which  had 
always  existed,  indestructible  in  its  nature,  ob- 
scured but  not  obliterated  by  human  ignorance 
and  sin."  ^ 

Dr.  Bigg,  in  the  Bampton  Lectures  for  1886, 
also  says  of  Clement :  "  He  looks  upon  redemp- 
tion, not  as  the  restitution  of  that  which  was 
lost  at  the  fall,  but  as  the  crown  and  consum- 
mation of  the  destiny  of  man,  1-eading  to  a 
righteousness  such  as  Adam  never  knew,  and  to 
heights  of  glory  and  power  as  yet  unsealed  and 
undreamed.  *  The  Word  of  God  became  Man, 
in  order  that  thou  also  mayest  learn  from  Man 
how  man  becomes  God.' " 

Origen  made  no  distinction  between  the  nat- 
ural state  of  Adam  and  that  in  which  all  mankind 

1  Epistle  to  Diognetus,  ch.  x. 

2  Continuity  of  Christian  Thought,  p.  57. 


THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD.  35 

have  since  been  born.  Athanasius  taught  that  in 
order  to  know  God  He  must  be  looked  for  in  the 
soul.  The  soul  sees  the  image  of  God  in  itself, 
and  in  itself  conceives  the  Father.^  And  he 
who  formulated  the  faith  the  Church  has  always 
held  in  the  incarnation,  declared  of  God  that 
His  essential  nature  was  love,  and  that  the  inner- 
most being  of  Deity  was  to  be  known  in  its  last 
analysis  as  the  Father.  We  cannot  better  state 
the  theology  which  prevailed  until  the  unhappy 
day  when  the  genius  of  Augustine  in  the  inter- 
ests and  the  name  of  Christianity  perverted  its 
creed  and  poisoned  its  spirit,  than  by  citing  the 
words  in  which  Professor  Allen  describes  it  in 
the  Bohlen  Lectures  for  1883:  "It  followed 
as  a  necessary  sequence  from  the  first  principle 
of  Greek  theology,  —  the  doctrine  of  the  Di- 
vine immanence,  —  that  man  should  be  viewed 
as  having  a  constitutional  kinship  with  Deity. 
By  the  image  of  God  in  man  was  understood 
an  inalienable  heritage,  a  spiritual  or  ethical 
birthright,  which  could  not  be  forfeited.  Deity 
and  humanity  were  not  alien  one  to  the  other  ; 
and  it  was  their  constitutional  relationship 
which  made  the  incarnation  not  only  possible, 
1  Contra  Gentes,  c.  34. 


36  THE  FATHERHOOD   OF   GOD. 

but    a    necessary    factor    in    the    process    of 
redemption."  ^ 

But  wi-th  the  advent  of  the  great  theologian 
on  whose  thought  has  been  modelled  the  creed 
of  all  the  Western  branch  of  the  Christian 
Church,  there  came  a  new  spirit  into  the  Church. 
The  doctrine  of  original  sin,  imputed  sin,  total 
depravity,  dates  clearly  from  the  mind  of  Augus- 
tine. According  to  its  terms,  humanity  is  abso- 
lutely separated  from  God  in  the  sin  of  Adam. 
The  guilt  of  sin  involves  the  whole  family  of 
man.  The  effect  of  that  sin  was  to  destroy 
utterly  in  man  the  image  of  God  in  which  man 
was  created.  Adam  lost  for  himself  and  his 
descendants  the  relationship  in  which  he  was 
begotten;  and  through  the  corrupt  and  utterly 
depraved  natures  they  inherit  from  their  ances- 
tor, human  souls  are  cut  off  from  God ;  and 
everything  akin  to  the  divine  in  reason,  in  con- 
science, in  will,  is  utterly  destroyed.  They 
are  children  of  God  no  longer,  they  are  only 
His  creatures.  And  it  is  only  by  the  ab- 
solute will  of  God,  electing  whom  He  will, 
rejecting  whom  He  chooses,  that  souls  are  re- 
ceived again    into  that  union  with  God  which 

1  Bohlen  Lectures,  p.  177. 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  37 

was  forfeited  by  the  first  man,  and  denied  to 
all  his  posterity. 

Such  was  Augustinianism.  And  such  is  the 
subtle  and  misleading  falsehood  with  which  the 
soul  of  Christendom  has  wrestled  from  that  day 
to  this.  It  was  perpetuated  in  the  theology  of 
the  Church  of  Rome,  and  spun  out  in  the  meta- 
physics of  the  Schoolmen.  It  glowered  in  the 
awful  blasphemies  of  Calvinism,  and  the  revolt 
of  Wesley  and  Whitefield  was  not  strong  enough 
to  break  its  malign  spell.  And  not  until  the 
intellectual  and  religious  life  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  stirring  in  the  thought  of  Germany  and 
England  and  America,  reverted  to  the  earlier 
type  of  Christianity  as  interpreted  by  the  great 
fathers,  was  the  bondage  of  Christendom  to  the 
Bishop  of  Hippo  broken,  and  the  larger  measure 
of  the  gospel  doctrine  of  the  Divine  fatherhood 
comprehended  anew. 

The  significance  of  the  theological  movement 
of  the  present  age  is  scarcely  understood  as  yet, 
even  by  those  most  active  in  jDromoting  it.  But 
it  begins  to  be  clear  that  it  is  a  return  to  the 
faith  of  the  first  three  centuries  in  the  Church's 
history.  The  orthodoxy  of  Augustine  cannot 
live  in  the  air  of  this  century.     Its  errors  and 


38  THE   FATHERHOOD    OF   GOD. 

exaggerations  are  destined  to  die  out  before  the 
thoughts  that  fill  men's  souls  to-day.  The  or- 
thodoxy of  Clement  and  of  Origen,  coming  as  it 
does  into  the  closest  relations  of  sympathy  and 
support  with  the  truths  which  science  has  most 
firmly  established,  is  renewing  its  hold  after  cen- 
turies of  condemnation.  And  in  no  respect  is 
this  generation  more  thoroughly  in  accord  with 
it  than  in  its  assertion  of  the  Divine  fatherhood, 
and  the  persistence  of  God's  image  in  the  human 
soul,  under  all  the  ruin  and  demoralization  of 
sin. 

VII.  —  Divine  Fatherhood  and  Divine  Love. 

It  is  impossible  for  the  student  of  this  truth 
as  it  has  been  revealed  to  humanity  by  Jesus 
Christ  to  escape  one  or  two  leading  and  impres- 
sive facts,  which  are  necessary  inferences  from 
this  attitude  of  God  to  man.  We  have  presented 
the  scriptural  testimony  to  the  truth  entirely 
from  one  side,  because  the  denial  of  the  univer- 
sality of  the  fatherhood  is  based  upon  the  change 
which  has  taken  place  in  human  nature  since 
the  fall.  The  entire  weight  of  the  imposing 
structure  of  text  and  argument  in  refutation  of 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  39 

God's  universal  fatherhood  rests  upon  the  as- 
sumption that  the  Divine  image  in  man  has  been 
utterly  lost,  and  that  this  loss  annihilates  the 
relationship.  But  is  that  true  ?  Is  there  not 
another  side  from  which  we  are  bound  to  ap- 
proach this  relationship  in  order  to  discover  its 
full  significance  ?  Fatherhood  has  two  sides. 
It  depends  as  much  upon  the  nature  of  God  as 
it  does  upon  the  nature  of  man.  It  rests  not 
alone  upon  the  perpetuity  of  the  Divine  image  in 
man,  but  also  upon  the  Divine  nature  in  whose 
image  man  was  created.  God  is  man's  father, 
by  virtue  of  what  He  is  in  His  own  infinite  na- 
ture. The  creation  of  man  was  the  spontaneous 
act  of  the  Divine  will.  God  made  man  in  His 
image,  of  His  own  choice  and  by  His  own  voli- 
tion, and  in  creating  him  assumed  a  relationship 
toward  him.  Now  that  relationship  no  act  of 
man  can  annul.  That  is  true  of  the  earthly 
manifestation  of  this  divine  relationship.  He 
who  begets  a  child  is  always  and  forever  that 
child's  father ;  and  there  are  obligations,  as  there 
are  sentiments,  growing  out  of  that  fact,  which 
no  act  of  the  child  can  destroy  or  alter  or 
modify.  Once  a  father,  man  is  always  a  father. 
For  though  he  seek  to  evade  his  duties,  or  with- 


40  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

hold  his  love,  he  cannot  abolish  the  unalterable 
fact  that  he  is  a  father,  and  that  his  own  act  has 
sealed  upon  him  certain  unchangeable  obliga- 
tions. More  than  that ;  if  he  be  a  true  father 
there  is  nothing  which  can  make  him  change  his 
relationship  to  his  child.  He  finds  it  ingrained 
in  his  Tery  nature.  He  must  be  a  father  to 
that  child,  no  matter  how  the  child  deports  him- 
self in  return.  The  child  may  lose  all  semblance 
of  likeness  to  his  father ;  he  may  become  abso- 
lutely imbecile,  and  be  bereft  of  reason,  intelli- 
gence, and  every  mental  likeness  to  his  parent. 
Still,  his  father  will  not  be  the  less  his  father, 
nor  less  under  bond  to  care  for  and  protect  his 
unhappy  child.  That  child  may  fall  into  the 
lowest  degradation,  may  lose  all  moral  likeness 
to  his  kindred,  may  sear  his  conscience  and 
blunt  every  spiritual  perception.  Still,  that  does 
not  shift  the  relationship,  does  not  alter  the  obli- 
gations of  fatherhood.  These  persist,  unalter- 
able by  any  act  of  the  child ;  and  the  nobler  the 
mould  in  which  that  parental  nature  is  cast,  and 
the  more  Christ-like  it  is,  the  more  impossible 
does  it  become  for  it  to  change  its  attitude  and 
be  anything  but  the  friend,  the  guardian,  the 
lover  of  its  offspring. 


THE  FATHERHOOD   OF   GOD.  41 

That  this  is  the  central  principle  of  the  Divine 
fatherhood  ;  that  it  rests  on  the  spontaneous 
disposition  of  God  toward  His  children,  and  not 
on  any  variable  or  fluctuating  condition  of  the 
soul  of  man  ;  that  God  fathers  man's  spirit  be- 
cause of  what  He  is  in  His  own  infinite  nature, 
—  we  find  corroboration  in  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  the  atonement.  Tliat  dogma  describes  work 
which  God  has  done  for  man,  not  by  virtue  of 
anything  man  has  done  or  failed  to  do,  but  by 
reason  of  the  love  for  man  which  wells  up  out 
of  God's  own  inexhaustible  beinor.  God  sends 
His  Son  to  save  the  world,  not  for  anything  man 
has  done,  but  because  He  loves  man,  and  de- 
sires to  rescue  him  from  the  bondage  of  sin. 
'^  God  was  in  Christ  reconciling  the  world  unto 
Himself."  ^  "  But  God  commendeth  His  love 
toward  us  in  that  while  we  were  yet  sinners 
Christ  died  for  us."  ^  "  In  this  was  manifested 
the  love  of  God  toward  us,  because  that  God 
sent  His  only  begotten  Son  into  tlie  world,  that 
we  might  live  through  Him.  Herein  is  love,  not 
that  we  loved  God,  but  that  He  loved  us,  and 
sent  His  Son  to  be  the  propitiation  for  our  sins."  ^ 

1  2  Corinthians  v.  19.  2  Romans  v.  8. 

3  1  John  iv.  9,  10. 


42  THE   FATHERHOOD   OF   GOD. 

The  ground  of  the  atonement  is  the  love,  un- 
changing and  unchangeable,  which  God  enter- 
tains toward  those  whom  He  has  created  in  His 
own  image.  The  impulse  to  save  and  redeem 
the  souls  of  men  comes  from  the  spontaneous 
and  irresistible  love  and  grace  of  God  the  Fa- 
ther. Upon  that  fact,  finally,  God's  fatherhood 
rests ;  and  nothing  can  change  it  except  the 
annihilation  of  His  children,  so  that  there  is 
nothing  for  God  to  be  a  father  to ;  or  the  utter 
transformation  of  His  own  nature. 

This,  after  all  has  been  said,  is  the  real  bond 
of  unity  which  makes  a  single  family  of  the 
human  race.  This  is  the  great  spiritual  fact, 
the  inner  truth  which  stands  in  such  close  rela- 
tions to  the  outward  signs  of  kinship  which 
mark  our  race.  The  anatomist  takes  man's 
frame  to  pieces,  and  finds  in  its  very  structure 
something  which  sets  him  off  in  a  different 
group  from  every  other  form  of  organic  life. 
The  antiquarian  hunts  out  his  remains,  his  early 
arts  and  simple  skill,  and  traces  common  needs 
and  common  modes  of  meeting  them.  The  his- 
torian recognizes  common  aims  running  through 
all  his  attempts  at  building  states  and  establish- 
ing his  social  life.     Philanthropy  points  to  his 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  43 

suffering,  counts  his  sighs,  and  notes  the  tears 
which  flow  alike  from  all  human  eyes,  and  bids 
us  mark  that  men  share  a  common  lot  of  bless- 
ing or  of   bane.     But   these,  after   all,  are   re- 
semblances which  serve  to  group  men  by  their 
outward  peculiarities.     They  form  a  sort  of  arti- 
ficial system,  so  long  as  we  rest  in  them  and  go 
no  deeper.     But  the  gospel,  announcing  the  fact 
of  man's   sonship   to   God,  accounts   for  these 
likenesses,  as  well  as  discovers  the  real  source 
of  the  unity  of  the  race.     In  that  thrilling  fact 
we  have  a  reason  why  one  man  is  like  another. 
It  is  for  the  same  reason  that  all  the  children 
in  one  family  have  blue  eyes,  or  light  hair,  or  a 
fair  complexion.     The  mark  of  their  parentage 
is  stamped  upon  them.     That  fundamental  fact 
accounts   for   all   the  others.     And  this  grand 
fundamental  truth  that  all  men  are  God's  chil- 
dren  explains  all  man's  various  struggles,  his 
yearning  heart,  his  creative  mind,  his  aspiring 
instincts,   his    unfolding   affections.      It   is   the 
God-nature  working  to  full  maturity.     Children 
are  not  related  because  they  look  alike;   they 
look  alike  because  they  are  related.     Human  be- 
ings, too,  are  not  called  brethren  because  they 
have  so  much  in  common.     They  possess  these 


4i  THE  FATHERHOOD   OF   GOD. 

common  traits  because  they  are  brethren,  chil- 
dren of  one  Father.  The  "  touch  of  nature " 
which  "  makes  the  whole  world  kin  "  is  the  like- 
ness of  man  to  his  Maker.  And  it  is  an  un- 
speakable privilege  to  us  all,  who  are  so  often 
classified  according  to  our  weaknesses  and  our 
sins,  and  reminded  of  our  likeness  to  each  other 
on  the  ground  of  our  universal  sinfulness  and 
sorrow,  to  come  up  to  the  summit  of  this  truth, 
which  lifts  us  so  high  and  gives  us  so  noble  a 
dignity.  Thank  God,  the  real  reason  why  we  are 
alike  is  not  because  we  are  so  easily  tempted, 
not  because  we  love  evil,  not  because  we  are 
ignorant,  weak,  or  wicked,  but  because  we  are 
the  children  of  the  Most  High;  because  one 
God  hath  created  us. 

The  line  of  kinship,  then,  includes  all  human 
souls.  It  makes  no  boundary  between  races  or 
nations.  It  classes  the  savage  in  his  imperfection 
with  a  Plato  or  a  Wilberforce.  For  the  savage 
has  a  soul  —  nay,  is  a  soul  —  as  truly  as  the 
sage  or  the  reformer.  He  bears  God's  likeness ; 
he  is  sustained  by  God's  life ;  he  is  the  recipient 
of  His  love.  The  powers  of  heaven  and  earth, 
visible  and  invisible,  are  enlisted  for  him  as 
truly  as  they  are  for  the  saints  or  the  seraphim. 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  45 

God  looks  with  impartial  tenderness  on  the 
dweller  by  the  tropic  Amazon,  and  the  denizen 
of  smoky  London.  The  sun  that  girdles  the 
earth  every  day  looks  on  no  face  of  all  the  hu- 
man kind  which  does  not  share  the  common 
birth-mark.  The  sailor  on  the  reeling  deck,  and 
he  who  for  his  sake  watches  the  light  upon  the 
solitary  reef ;'  the  artisan  at  his  toil,  the  soldier 
pouring  out  his  blood  in  battle,  and  the  little 
babe  upon  its  mother's  breast;  the  judge  upon 
the  bench,  and  the  unhappy  convicts  in  scores  of 
dreary  prisons ;  prince  and  peasant ;  statesman 
and  serf ;  the  godly  and  the  sinful ;  the  youth 
and  the  grandsire,  —  these  all  being  the  offspring 
of  one  Creator  are  His  souls,  His  sons  and 
daughters.  No  matter  whether  a  man  dwells  in 
high  places  or  low,  whether  he  keeps  the  law  of 
God  or  breaks  it,  still  he  is  God's  child  always 
and  forever.  Manhood  itself  is  the  divine  qual- 
ity, —  the  trait  which  links  us  to  our  God. 

It  follows  from  these  premises  that  whatever 
conclusions  as  to  the  destiny  of  souls  are  drawn 
from  the  nature  of  God  and  His  dispositions 
toward  men,  cannot  be  undermined  by  any  as- 
sault upon  the  relationship  which  is  assumed  in 
calling  God  the  father  of  all  souls,  because  those 


46  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

conclusions  rest  upon  no  mere  playing  with 
words  and  logical  or  theological  niceties  over 
terms.  The  faith  in  the  final  triumph  of  God 
does  not  depend  upon  the  name  we  may  give  to 
God,  but  upon  the  love  which  He  bears  to  souls, — 
a  love  which  makes  the  name  of  "  father  "  more 
expressive  of  His  real  attitude  to  men  than  any 
other  known  to  them.  If  men  choose  to  quibble 
over  the  doctrine  of  the  fatherhood  of  God,  and 
cling  to  the  doctrine  of  total  depravity,  and  in- 
sist that  a  corrupt  soul  is  not  a  child  of  God, 
they  are  welcome  to  do  so.  They  do  not  touch 
the  great  central  dogma  of  Christian  faith,  on 
which  Universalism  plants  itself  and  defies  dis- 
lodgement.  That  truth  is :  That  God  loves  men, 
all  men,  sinful  men,  depraved  men ;  loves  them 
so  much  that  He  sent  His  Son  to  save  them ; 
loves  them  without  return  and  without  recogni- 
tion ;  loves  them'  with  a  love  which  could  only 
find  its  adequate  expression  in  the  cross  on  Cal- 
vary ;  loves  them  with  a  love  which  is  without 
variableness  or  shadow  of  turning.  His  love  is 
unaffected  by  the  sin  of  man,  which  only  rouses 
it  to  sacrifice  for  the  sinner's  sake.  And  His 
love  does  not  rest  upon  the  maintenance  of  a 
fixed  and  definite  likeness  of  an  ima,2:e  to  its 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  47 

original.  It  grows  out  of  the  self-sustained  na- 
ture of  the  everlasting  God,  which  nature  is,  in 
its  last  essence,  a  nature  of  love.  In  other 
words,  and  briefly,  the  love  of  God  does  not 
grow  out  of  the  fatherhood  of  God,  but  the 
fatherhood  of  God  has  its  root  in  the  love  of 
God.  And  since  the  New  Testament  expressly 
declares  the  love  of  God  for  the  sinful  soul,  is  it 
a  great  stretch  of  interpretation  to  infer  the 
fatherhood  of  God  from  the  same  declarations  ? 
At  all  events  it  makes  but  little  difference 
whether  we  rest  our  faith  in  the  blessed  destiny 
on  the  fatherhood  of  God  or  the  love  of  God. 
Both  describe  the  attitude  and  relation  of  God 
to  man,  out  of  which  it  is  safe  to  infer  that  good 
must  come  at  last  to  all. 

This  is  the  great  truth  to  which  the  mission 
of  Jesus  upon  earth  bears  conspicuous  witness. 
His  whole  life  was  an  embodiment  of  God's  dis- 
position toward  men,  and  His  death  set  forth  yet 
more  gloriously  the  sacred  fact  of  God's  paternal 
love.  In  life  and  in  death  Jesus  was  testifying 
to  the  fatherhood  of  God,  and  to  the  affection- 
ate care  which  that  relationship  implies.  And 
the  peculiar  and  salient  feature  of  the  Divine 
love  which  Jesus  manifested  to  man  was  its  free 


48  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

and  unconstrained  quality.  Everything  about 
Christ's  life  for  man,  every  sacrifice  and  every 
duty,  was  a  voluntary  gift  to  humanity.  His  will 
was  under  no  duress.  He  was  acting  freely. 
He  made  a  free  offering  of  Himself  to  the  cause 
of  human  salvation,  —  the  reconciliation  of  the 
child  to  his  Father,  the  restoration  of  harmony 
between  earth  and  heaven.  But  in  our  Saviour 
we  are  taught  to  see  our  God ;  in  what  He  did 
for  us,  what  God  is  ever  doing  for  us ;  in  the 
attitude  of  His  spirit  toward  us,  a  sign  and  proof 
of  God's  eternal  bearing  toward  His  offspring. 
As  Christ's  love  for  the  world  depended  on 
nothing  that  the  world  had  done  for  Him,  so 
the  Father's  love  of  His  children  depends  not 
on  their  nature  or  works,  but  upon  His  own. 
He  loves  them  spontaneously,  because  it  is  His 
nature  to  love  them.  So  that  however  man 
may  be  disposed  toward  God,  the  Father  never 
changes  His  disposition  toward  man.  Even  in 
his  sins  and  wanderings  God  is  loving  him, 
though  varying  the  mode  of  manifesting  that 
love  to  suit  the  needs  of  the  soul.  Jesus  dying 
for  a  world  which  had  rejected  and  crucified 
Him,  Jesus  praying  in  His  last  moments  for 
the  very  men  whose  sins  hung  Him  on  the  cross, 


THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD.  49 

is  an  everlasting  type  of  the  Father  whose  love 
is  equally  bestowed  on  all  mankind. 

This  is  the  very  essence  of  New  Testament 
teaching.  The  apostle  Paul  declares  that  "  God 
was  in  Christ,  reconciling  the  world  unto  Him- 
self," 1  —  a  plain  announcement  that  God  takes 
the  initiative  in  this  holy  work.  He  says  again, 
"  God  commendeth  (or  proveth)  His  love  toward 
us,  in  that,  while  we  were  yet  sinners,  Christ 
died  for  us."  ^  John  says :  "  In  this  was  mani- 
fested the  love  of  God  toward  us,  because  that 
God  sent  His-  only  begotten  Son  into  the  world, 
that  we  might  live  through  Him.  Herein  is 
love,  not  that  we  loved  God,  but  that  He  loved 
us,  and  sent  His  Son  to  be  the  propitiation  for 
our  sins."  ^  Jesus  Himself  accounts  for  His  own 
presence  in  this  world  in  the  words, ''  For  God  so 
loved  the  world."  "^  The  very  essence  of  God's 
love  is  its  spontaneousness,  which  lifts  it  above 
all  possible  conditions,  all  limitation  by  man's 
sinfulness,  and  makes  it  dependent  only  on  the 
nature  of  the  Father. 

The  parables  of  Jesus  always  enforce  the 
same  truth.     They  are  full  of  this  doctrine  of  a 

1  2  Corinthians  v.  19.  2  Romans  v.  8. 

3  1  John  iv.  10.  4  John  iii.  16. 


50  THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD. 

love  in  God's  heart  which  antedates  and  tran- 
scends any  goodness  and  any  merit  on  man's  part, 
and  is  self-originating  and  self-subsistent.  That 
wonderful  series  of  parables  which  seems  to 
speak  the  very  heart  of  the  Master,  and  illus- 
trates the  inner  spirit  of  the  gospel,  —  the  stories 
of  the  Lost  Sheep,  the  Lost  Piece  of  Silver,  and 
the  Prodigal  Son,  — these  are  all  so  many  illus- 
trations of  the  boundless  and  spontaneous  nature 
of  Divine  love,  a  love  which  does  not  need  to  be 
won  by  service,  nor  bought  with  the  price  of  love 
returned,  since  it  is  continually  anticipating  our 
affection  and  our  duty,  and  far  outrunning  the 
swiftness  of  our  gratitude.  The  shepherd  is 
following  the  sheep  in  his  wanderings.  The 
woman  is  searching  for  the  lost  money.  The 
father  is  loving  the  prodigal  so  dearly  that 
he  watches  for  him  and  sees  him  yet  a  great 
way  off  and  runs  to  meet  him.  In  every  case 
there  is  the  implication  that  God's  love  is  origi- 
nal and  spontaneous,  lying  behind  all  the  agen- 
cies and  the  measures  by  which  man's  salvation 
is  wrought.  Nor  can  the  inference  be  avoided, 
that  as  long  as  the  nature  of  God  endures,  this 
love  will  urge  Him  to  labors  for  man's  good,  — 
lal)ors  which  can  no  more  be  limited  to  the  brief 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  51 

years  of  this  life  than  the  power  of  gravitation 
can  be  confined  to  our  planet. 


yill.  —  Fatherhood  and  Human  Depravity. 

But  we  are  not  willing  to  rest  the  matter  here, 
for  if  we  did  it  might  seem  that  we  conceded 
by  faint  implication  the  doctrine  that  human 
nature  has  lost  all  semblance  of  the  Divine  na- 
ture, and  that  in  it  the  image  of  God  is  totally 
destroyed.  That  we  are  far  from  doing.  This 
is  the  dark,  discredited  doctrine  of  total  deprav- 
ity, disguised,  softened,  asserted  indirectly,  but 
at  bottom  the  ancient  discreditable  falsehood  as 
to  human  nature  which  has  weighed  down  the 
theology  of  fourteen  centuries.  No  clear-sighted 
student  of  theology  will  for  a  moment  deny  the 
corruption,  nay,  the  depravity  of  human  nature, 
nor  the  stern  law  which  entails  the  curse  by 
heredity.  All  that  is  conceded.  But  to  say  that 
this  depravity  can  totally  wreck  God's  image  in 
the  soul,  that  it  obliterates  the  very  semblance 
of  the  Divine  in  the  nature  of  man,  that  it  wholly 
defiles  him  "  in  all  faculties  and  parts  of  soul  and 
body,"  is  utterly  inconsistent  with  the  Scrip- 
ture we  have  cited,  and  is  foreign  to  the  whole 


52  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF   GOD. 

tenor  of  theological  teaching  up  to  the  time  of 
Augustine.  When  we  speak  of  the  image  of  God 
in  which  man  was  created  we  must  admit,  as 
Dr.  Mark  Hopkins  truly  says,  that  "  the  image 
of  God  to  be  thus  created  was  not  anything  in- 
cidental or  that  could  be  separated  from  man, 
but  must  consist  in  something  so  essential  to 
him  that  if  he  should  lose  it  he  would  cease  to 
be  a  man.  ...  So  long  as  man  continues  to  be 
rational,  moral,  and  free,  and  hence  capable  of 
knowing  God,  he  will  be  in  His  image ;  and 
when  he  ceases  to  be  rational,  moral,  and  free  he 
will  no  longer  be  man."  ^  Or  in  the  fine  phrase 
of  Canon  Liddon:  "The  fall  of  man  consists 
rather  in  the  privation  of  God's  supernatural 
grace  than  in  a  positive  corruption  of  all  his 
faculties,  such  as  has  been  imagined  by  some 
modern  divines ;  and  as  the  doctrine  was  under- 
stood by  the  ancient  Church,  the  fall  left  human 
nature  dismantled  indeed,  but  something  less 
than  a  shapeless  ruin.  ...  In  each  of  Adam's 
children  the  Divine  image  was  still  traceable  in 
its  twofold  features  of  intelligence  and  freedom, 
though  the   one  was  darkened,  and   the  other 

1  Scriptural  Idea  of  Man,  p.  26. 


THE   FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD.  53 

impaired."  ^  That  is  the  statement  of  one  of  the 
most  eminent  and  profound  of  English  theolo- 
gians ;  and  it  may  well  serve  as  a  summary  of 
the  doctrine  of  this  thesis.  Even  so  gloomy  and 
pessimistic  a  Methodist  as  Dr.  L.  T.  Townsend 
concedes  "  the  fact  of  the  existence  of  an  inher- 
ing or  adhering  goodness  in  human  nature,  which 
may  be  termed  germinal  in  the  sense  of  possess- 
ing undeveloped  elements."  ^ 

Let  us  note  one  other  important  corollary  of 
the  truth  Ave  are  discussing.  If  it  were  true  that 
there  is  no  trace  left  in  sinful  men  of  the  Divine 
image,  there  could  be  no  ground  of  appeal  to 
man  to  bring  him  to  repentance.  There  is  no 
use  in  calling  a  physician  to  restore  health  in 
an  organism  that  is  absolutely  destroyed.  So  if 
the  mind  has  parted  with  reason,  there  is  no 
ground  on  which  to  stand  in  appealing  to  the 
darkened  intellect.  If,  then,  there  were  nothing 
in  man  which  allied  him  to  God,  no  common  life 
by  virtue  of  his  descent  from  Deity,  then  there  is 
no  power  conceivable  which  could  make  man 
understand  the  call  God  makes  upon  him  to 
repent,  amend  his  ways,  and  take  his  place  as  a 

1  University  Sermons,  first  series,  p.  304. 

2  Lost  Forever,  p.  183. 


54  THE   FATHERHOOD   OF   GOD. 

child  in  God's  blessed  company  of  the  redeemed. 
The  nature  of  man,  with  its  latent  spiritual  pow- 
ers, the  undeveloped  image  of  the  Father,  is  the 
basis  of  God's  work  in  developing  him  into  the 
divine  life.  If  it  were  not  for  that  germinal  na- 
ture which  answers  to  the  appeal  of  its  Creator, 
man  could  never  exert  the  slightest  effort  of  will 
toward  his  own  salvation ;  and  if  it  were  true 
that  the  Divine  image  is  utterly  destroyed  by  sin, 
then  He  who  came  to  save  sinners  might  as  well 
have  been  sent  to  a  race  of  graven  images  or  a 
family  of  pine-trees.  "  The  human  heart,"  says 
Newman  Smyth,  "  with  all  its  passions  and  im- 
purities, is  still  the  truest  mirror  in  which  we 
can  behold  the  invisible  God."  And  it  is  this 
God-likeness  in  our  hearts  which  makes  them 
answer  at  all  to  the  persuasions  of  the  Holy 
Spirit.  If  the  germ  and  elements  of  eternal  life 
liad  not  been  folded  within  our  hearts  in  our 
natural  birth,  they  would  never  be  unfolded  in  tlie 
new  birth,  —  the  birth  from  above.  When  man 
turns  away  from  sin  and  seeks  the  face  of  God, 
his  own  nature  is  answering  that  Nature  in  whose 
image  he  was  formed,  and  the  soul  is  rising  into 
its  own  true  life. 

Universalism,  like  all  kindred  phases  of  the 


THE  FATHERHOOD   OF   GOD.  55 

new  theology,  puts  the  doctrine  of  regeneration 
on  a  firmer  basis  in  reason  and  in  Scripture  than 
it  ever  had  on  the  artificial  foundations  reared  by 
Augustinianism.  For  it  is  asserted  as  a  process 
involving  known  laws  and  analogies,  just  as 
Christ  delivered  it  to  man,  and  not  as  a  device 
of  spiritual  magic,  or  extraordinary  and  irregu- 
lar exercise  of  Divine  force.  It  is  asserted  as  a 
necessary  step  in  man's  induction  into  the  higher 
life,  as  a  necessity  of  the  soul.  Man  cannot 
rise  upward  into  the  life  of  the  spiritual  world 
until  he  has  been  born  of  the  Spirit,  any  more 
than  he  can  enter  the  natural  world  till  he  has 
been  born  of  the  flesh.  But  the  second  birth  is 
as  much  a  universal  necessity  as  the  first,  and, 
like  the  birth  in  the  body,  is,  in  the  words  of  Dr. 
Munger,  "  a  constructive,  not  a  reconstructive 
process."  It  is  the  step  which  every  sinner  will 
at  last  be  constrained  to  take,  not  by  the  arbitrary 
will  of  Deity,  but  by  the  necessities  of  his  own 
nature,  —  the  law  of  that  constitution  in  which 
he  was  formed,  when  God  proposed  to  gather  to- 
gether in  one  "  all  things  in  Christ."  For  this 
great  fact  and  law  of  spiritual  life,  Universalism 
has  borne  no  uncertain  testimony.  The  neces- 
sity of  regeneration  has  never  been  denied ;  and 


66  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

least  of  all  is  its  denial  involved  in  the  universal 
fatherhood,  which  is  the  very  corner-stone  on 
which  it  rests.  Universalism  simply  asserts  for 
all  men,  as  a  law  of  the  life  of  the  soul,  what  the 
traditional  Christianity  limits  to  the  few  and  the 
favored. 

It  is  the  strength  of  the  new  theology  that  it 
places  this  great  fact  of  the  spiritual  life  upon 
an  impregnable  basis.  It  treats  regeneration  as 
a  normal  and  natural  fact  of  man's  experience, 
as  much  in  the  nature  of  things  as  the  change 
of  the  embryo  into  the  child,  and  of  the  child 
into  the  man.  Nay,  more ;  we  may  use  the 
terms  of  science,  and  assert  that  Christianity 
declares  what  we  call  regeneration  to  be  the 
evolution  of  a  higher  humanity  out  of  a  lower. 

There  is  another  form  which  is  sometimes  used 
as  an  alternative  reading  of  the  passage  in  which 
Jesus  describes  the  new  birth,  which  renders 
it,  "  Except  a  man  be  born  from  above,  he  can- 
not see  the  kingdom  of  God."  ^  That  explains 
the  place  of  this  great  experience  in  the  cate- 
gories of  science.  Every  advance  of  species 
from  a  lower  to  a  higher  grade,  or  every  crea- 
tion of  a  higher  to  supersede  a  lower,  is  an  in- 

1  John  iii.  3. 


THE  FATHERHOOD   OF   GOD.  57 

flowing  of  life   from  above,  —  of  tJie  Life  from 
above  which  creates  us  all. 

In  the  exercise  of  His  fatherly  love  and  the 
unfolding  of  His  paternal  providence  toward 
man,  God  brings  him  at  last  to  this  crowning- 
step  in  the  long  ascent  of  evolution.  It  will  be 
the  highest  in  all  probability  that  we  shall  ever 
see  taken  in  this  world.  It  will  be  the  process  by 
which  this  earth  shall  receive  a  new  race,  as  far 
above  the  man  of  the  present  age  as  he  is  above 
the  cave-dweller  and  the  bushman.  This  is  the 
goal  of  God's  fatherly  purpose  for  man ;  and  this 
goal  is  to  be  attained  through  the  spiritual  re- 
newal and  uplifting  of  man  which  is  called  the 
birth  from  above. 

IX.  —  Fatherhood  and  the  Problem  of 
Evil. 

No  survey  of  the  doctrine  of  the  fatherhood  of 
God,  even  the  most  cursory,  can  leave  untouched 
its  relations  to  the  existence  of  evil.  The  pres- 
ence of  this  element  in  the  creation  is  a  fact 
always  hard  to  reconcile  with  the  goodness  of 
the  Divine  nature.  This  was  the  problem  which 
tried  the  faithful  heart  of  Job,  and  is  the  refrain 


58  THE   FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

-^hich  runs  through  that  sublime  epic  of  suffer- 
ing, which  has  anticipated  all  that  Hartmann 
or  Schopenhauer  or  Mill  or  Ingersoll  ever  al- 
leged against  the  doctrine  of  the  Divine  love 
and  fatherhood.  This  is  the  problem  which 
presented  itself  to  the  mind  of  Paul  when  he 
made  that  immortal  answer,  —  the  only  possible 
solution  and  the  only  needful  one :  "  For  the 
creature  was  made  subject  to  vanity,  not  will- 
ingly, but  by  reason  of  him  who  hath  subjected 
the  same  in  hope."  ^  For  whatever  may  be  said 
of  any  other  theories  concerning  evil  and  the 
Divine  love,  it  is  certain  that  there  is  one  which 
offers  a  reasonable  and  consistent  interpretation 
of  this  mystery,  so  far  as  any  is  possible  in  our 
present  condition  of  ignorance  and  limitation. 
No  man  can  do  more  than  indicate  a  rational 
theory  on  this  matter.  For  the  full  demonstra- 
tion of  its  truth  we  must  await  the  fulfilment 
of  the  ages.  "  The  crucial  test  of  a  thoughtful 
mind,"  says  some  one,  "  is  a  sense  of  the  mys- 
tery of  life."  But  there  is  an  appreciable  relief 
to  that  sense  when  it  approaches  the  facts  of 
evil  and  of  sin  in  some  such  faith  as  the  com- 
mon-sense of  the  age  is  coming  to  have  in  the 

1  Romans  viii.  20. 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF   GOD.  59 

teachings  of  the  gospel, — that  this  is  a  growing 
world,  developing  toward  some  high  end  whose 
attainment  shall  explain  the  windings  of  the 
way  by  -which  it  was  reached.  If  we  can  see 
any  beneficent  end  to  moral  evil,  both  for  the 
creation  as  a  whole  and  for  every  individual  in 
it,  we  can  reconcile  evil  with  the  goodness  of 
God.  If  we  find  reasons  for  believing  that  such 
an  issue  is  possible  for  every  human  soul,  we 
can  believe  the  fact  compatible  with  the  father- 
hood of  God.  Present  evil  is  perfectly  consistent 
with  infinite  power  and  love  if  it  can  be  shown 
that  it  is  temporary,  transitional,  —  a  phase  of 
existence,  and  not  a  finality.  The  pain,  the 
strife,  the  suffering  of  the  world's  early  age 
become  less  formidable  in  their  challenge  to 
faith,  if  we  see  in  them  the  "  growing  pains  " 
of  an  expanding  creation.  The  feuds  and  fight- 
ings which  have  cursed  the  past  seem  less  hard 
to  reconcile  with  a  benevolent  purpose  when  we 
see  how  they  have  paved  the  way  for  an  era  when 
wars  shall  cease.  The  cloud  of  personal  bereave- 
ment and  grief  has  a  silver  lining  when  we  have 
learned  how  afflictions  purify  and  deepen  the 
springs  of  life.  So,  too,  if  there  is  any  fruitage 
of  salvation  to  grow  out  of  penalty  and  retribu- 


60  THE  FATHERHOOD   OF   GOD. 

tion,  it  is  not  hard  to  believe  penalty  salutary 
and  beneficent.  And  if  it  appear  that  out  of 
the  deep  furrowings  of  sin  there  may  spring  up 
better  dispositions,  and  the  wrath  of  man,  under 
the  care  and  influence  of  God,  turn  to  praise, 
then  the  deeps  of  hell  itself  are  not  profound 
enough  to  hide  the  fact  of  a  paternal  purpose, 
both  wise  and  loving,  in  the  moral  economy  of 
human  life.  Now  this  solution  of  the  dark 
problem  is  proffered  us  to-day,  not  only  by  the 
champions  of  religious  faith,  but  also  by  the 
very  high-priest  of  the  scientific  philosophy. 
"  Evil,"  says  Herbert  Spencer,  "  perpetually  tends 
to  disappear ; "  and  he  adds  a  graphic  summary 
of  reasons  why  "  the  things  we  call  evil  and 
immorality  must  disappear."  ^  Mr.  John  Fiske, 
too,  in  his  remarkable  monograph  on  "  The 
Destiny  of  Man,"  declares :  "  Strife  and  sorrow 
shall  disappear,  peace  and  love  shall  reign  su- 
preme. .  .  .  The  kingdoms  of  this  world  shall 
become  the  kingdom  of  Christ,  and  He  shall 
reign  forever  and  ever."^  And  what  is  this 
but  the  teaching  of  the  great  Apostle  himself, 
when  he  declares,  "  The  creature  itself  also 
shall  be  delivered  from  the  bondage  of  corrup- 

1  Social  Statics,  pp.  74,  78.      2  The  Destiny  of  Man,  p.  118. 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  61 

tion  into  the  glorious  liberty  of  the  children  of 
God"?^ 

In  this  thought  of  the  creation  and  all  its  evils, 
we  have  ample  ground  on  which  to  stand  in  faith 
in  the  fatherhood  and  love  of  God,  working  from 
age  to  age  for  the  perfecting  and  blessing  of  His 
creation.  Once  admit  the  thought  that  all  the 
past  and  all  the  present  are  looking  forward ; 
building  up  powers  and  resources  for  the  future 
to  use  and  draw  upon  ;  training  and  disciplining 
intuitions  and  aptitudes,  senses,  functions,  voli- 
tions ;  laying  deep  courses  of  foundation-stone 
on  which  to  raise  the  fair  structure  of  a  better, 
a  holier  life,  —  and  we  have  a  ground  on  which 
to  stand  in  hope.  If  it  be  allowed  us  to  say  and 
believe  that  the  universe  is  not  stationary  but 
growing,  its  destiny  one  of  peace  and  harmony, 
its  sufferings  incidental  to  a  higher  enjoyment, 
we  can  afford  to  suspend  our  gloomy  judgments, 
give  faith  her  rights,  and  frankly  facing  every 
mysterious  evil,  from  the  crushing  of  a  fly  to 
the  overwhelming  of  a  nation,  still  believe 

'*  That  nothing  walks  with  aimless  feet, 
That  not  one  life  shall  be  destroyed, 
Or  cast  as  rubbish  to  the  void, 
When  God  hath  made  the  pile  complete. 

1  Romans  viii.  21. 


62  THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD. 

"  That  not  a  worm  is  cloven  in  vain, 
That  not  a  moth  with  vain  desire 
Is  shrivelled  in  a  fruitless  fire, 
Or  but  subserves  another's  gain." 

But  here  let  it  be  said,  with  the  utmost  em- 
phasis, that  it  is  upon  this  theory  of  the  Divine 
government  alone  that  the  Divine  goodness  can 
be  vindicated  or  the  Divine  fatherhood  main- 
tained. The  assumption  that  evil  must  eternally 
exist,  a  blot  upon  the  creation  and  a  drawback 
to  its  harmony ;  that  sin  is  destined  to  prolong 
itself,  contrary  to  the  will  of  God  and  the  prayers 
and  struggles  of  humanity,  —  this  thought  under- 
mines all  the  faith  we  are  striving  to  maintain 
in  God's  loving  rule,  and  brings  us  face  to  face 
with  most  despairing  conclusions  in  regard  to 
God's  ability  or  His  desire.  Eternal  sin  and 
eternal  penalty,  if  they  be  facts,  are  utterly  un- 
mitigated by  any  ray  of  light.  They  are  a  black 
curse  on  the  creation.  They  are  a  reproach  to 
God's  love  ;  for  they  are  without  redeeming 
features,  without  purpose,  and  without  results. 
They  load  souls  with  pain  which  does  them  no 
good,  which  only  exasperates  and  maddens, 
without  the  least  tendency  either  to  redeem  or 
to   destroy.      And    so,   like   any   theory    about 


THE   FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD.  63 

natural  evil  which  makes  it  appear  a  perpetual 
element  in  the  creation,  they  are  incompatible 
with  a  benevolent  scheme  of  things,  and,  by  con- 
sequence, with  a  benevolent  Creator  and  Ruler. 

It  is  the  privilege,  then,  of  believers  in  the 
gospel  of  Christ  and  the  gospel  of  modern  sci- 
ence to  see  that  through  all  the  woe  and  want 
and  weariness  of  creation  there  runs  a  thread  of 
blessing.  Nature  indeed  has  a  hand  of  iron 
under  her  velvet  glove.  Her  face  is  as  stern  as 
it  is  beautiful.  Her  severities  press  upon  us  on 
all  sides,  and  they  are  unsparing,  rigorous,  in- 
variable. They  buffet  us  in  her  piercing  winds  ; 
they  beat  upon  us  in  her  withering  heats ;  they 
smite  us  in  her  fierce  lightnings.  Her  laws  are 
pitiless,  and  her  agents  titanic  and  remorseless. 
She  inflicts  a  thousand  austerities,  which  at  first 
sight  seem  like  cruelties.  The  story  of  evolution 
is  a  tale  of  endless  conflict  and  violence.  Prog- 
ress is  a  terrible  struggle  for  supremacy.  The 
way  of  salvation,  the  path  to  sainthood  itself,  is 
rough  and  thorny,  rugged  with  sorrows  and 
with  denials.  But  that  is  only  the  background 
of  the  pattern  which  the  Eternal  Mind  is  weav- 
ing on  the  clashing  looms  of  life ;  and  he  who 
looks  with   true   insight  already  sees  gleaming 


64  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

threads  falling  into  shapes  of  beauty  and  of 
light.  The  true  meaning  of  pain  is  blessing. 
We  do  not  know  how  evil  came  into  this  world. 
We  know  not  why  God  could  not  have  made  us 
saints  without  making  us  suffer  first.  We  dare 
not  judge  the  Almighty  and  His  purposes  and 
methods  by  the  poor,  blind  reasonings  of  our 
human  minds.  But  this  we  kno^v,  that  all  pain 
is  not  punishment;  that  suffering  bears  in  its 
bosom  tlie  seeds  of  a  diviner  state ;  that  our 
crosses  raise  us  to  our  crowns ;  that  the  severi- 
ties we  endure  all  issue  in  a  higher  and  a  happier 
life.  The  human  heart  is  stronger  than  any  of 
the  forces  which  hurt  it.  There  is  no  adversity, 
no  form  of  suffering  or  of  pain,  over  which  we 
may  not  see  some  souls  rising  in  triumph,  happy 
in  spite  of  life's  severity.  And  one  single  in- 
stance is  enough  to  prove  that  pain  is  consistent 
with  happiness,  and  that  severity  is  no  contra- 
diction of  love. 

X.  —  Fatherhood  and  Retribution. 

Turn,  in  attestation  of  this  truth,  to  the  his- 
tory of  human  experience,  in  connection  with 
the  fact  of  retribution.     The  keenest  sufferings, 


THE  FATHERHOOD   OF   GOD.  65 

the  most  awful  severities,  inflicted  upon  human 
souls  are  those  which  wickedness  produces,  — 
are  the  sequences  of  sin.  And  these,  unhap- 
pily, have  nearly  always  been  interpreted  as  the 
tokens  of  Divine  anger, — an  anger  which  was 
without  mercy  and  without  love,  inflicting  ven- 
geance for  its  own  sake,  and  gloating  over  suf- 
fering as  aimless  as  it  was  cruel.  But  is  this 
the  only  possible  view  of  the  severities  with 
which  God  visits  sin  ?  Is  there  no  benevolence 
in  them  ?  Are  they  necessarily  the  outcome  of 
harshness  and  of  hate  ?  Suppose  they  should 
be  the  sharp  thorns  of  the  hedges  God  has  set 
up  to  keep  us  in  the  way  of  virtue.  Suppose 
they  should  be  the  uneasy  bed  on  which  no 
wicked  soul  can  lie  in  peace.  That  would  be  no 
impossible  interpretation  of  them  ;  but  it  would 
lend  to  them  at  once  a  new  meaning  pregnant 
with  hope  and  bright  with  love. 

If  God  be  a  true  Father,  He  will  use  all  the 
devices  of  His  Divine  economy  to  prevent  misery 
and  foster  happiness.  His  laws  will  be  framed 
so  as  to  secure  that  happiness.  Our  good  will 
lie  in  the  observance  of  these  laws.  So  that  to 
attain  our  good,  we  must  be  kept  from  breaking 
the  laws  which  insure  it  to  us.     This  makes  hap- 

5 


QQ  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF   GOD. 

piness  the  same  tiling  as  harmony  with  God's 
will,  and  unhappiness  discord  with  that  will. 
The  labor,  then,  of  the  Divine  love  will  be  to 
keep  us  in  the  way  of  righteousness.  Every 
device  which  wisdom  and  affection  can  suggest 
will  be  used  to  secure  this  end.  Every  induce- 
ment will  be  offered  to  obedience ;  every  deter- 
rent will  be  held  up  to  disobedience.  This  we- 
find  to  be  the  law  of  the  moral  universe.  All 
the  forces  of  resistance  are  concentrated  upon 
man  to  restrain  him  from  sin.  Every  possible 
inducement  is  offered  him  to  walk  in  the  way 
where  his  virtue  and  his  happiness  both  lie. 
When  a  man  attempts  to  pass  the  boundaries 
of  right,  he  encounters  some  form  of  pain.  The 
farther  he  goes,  the  more  he  suffers.  Like  one 
who  tries  to  penetrate  a  thicket,  and  gets  him- 
self into  worse  tangles  with  every  step  he  goes ; 
like  a  man  beating  out  to  sea  against  a  heavy 
gale,  who  finds  every  wave  he  meets  worse  than 
the  last,  —  is  he  who  deserts  the  strait  and  narrow 
way  for  some  cross-cut  to  indulgence,  some  ex- 
cursion into  the  seductive  fields  of  pleasant  vice. 
He  involves  himself  in  worse  difficulties  and 
severer  pains  the  farther  he  goes.  God  has  no 
pity  on  him  while  he  strays ;  or  rather.  He  is  so 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  67 

pitiful  that  He  will  use  any  severity  to  keep  him 
from  straying.  He  rains  misfortunes  on  him, 
follows  him  with  disasters,  multiplies  the  dangers 
which  infest  his  path.  Of  all  possible  courses 
open  to  the  human  heart,  God  has  made  the 
virtuous  course  always  the  easiest.  Observe,  we 
do  not  need  to  say,  what  is  not  true,  that  right- 
eousness is  easy.  But  it  is  easier  than  sin.  That 
is  an  unalterable  law  of  the  creation.  For  every 
difficulty  and  every  pain  in  the  path  of  the  right- 
eous, you  may  count  a  score  in  that  hard  way 
in  which  transgressors  walk.  If  it  is  hard  to  be 
good,  it  is  harder  still  to  be  bad.  And  any  man 
who  yields  to  temptation  under  the  impression 
that  it  is  easier  to  do  that  than  to  resist,  makes 
as  serious  a  mistake  as  he  who  should  decide 
that  it  was  easier  to  lie  in  bed  and  see  his  house 
burn  down  about  him  than  to  get  up  and  put  out 
the  fire. 

There  is  a  favorite  principle  of  modern  sci- 
ence which,  like  all  the  truth  of  a  real  science, 
finds  an  application  in  this  realm  of  life.  The 
fact  we  are  affirming  is  the  spiritual  side  of  a 
great  natural  law.  It  is  a  favorite  doctrine  of 
Mr.  Spencer  and  his  school,  that  life  develops 
along  the  line  of  least  resistance.     Every  com- 


6S  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

bination  among  the  forces  which  have  given  us 
this  earth  and  tlie  life  there  is  in  it,  is  deter- 
mined by  the  escape  of  motion  in  the  direction 
where  there  is  the  strongest  force  or  the  least 
opposition.  What  the  religious  man  calls  the 
"  course  of  Providence,"  the  man  of  science  calls 
the  operation  of  natural  force  along  the  line  of 
least  resistance.  All  the  structural  changes  of 
the  earth,  the  progress  and  modification  of  so- 
cial life,  the  development  of  physical  peculiari- 
ties in  the  individual,  and  even  the  growth  of 
moral  habits,  depend  upon  this  broad  principle. 
No  doubt  this  is  a  generalization  as  true  in  the 
moral  world  as  in  the  physical.  The  direction 
of  Divine  Providence  is  along  the  line  of  least  re- 
sistance. Indeed,  we  ought  rather  to  say  that 
the  line  of  the  least  resistance  is  the  path  Divine 
Providence  has  already  marked  out  for  itself. 

The  law  that  the  fittest  only  survive  has  a  moral 
manifestation.  Stated  in  the  terms  of  theology, 
it  means  the  triumph  of  good  over  evil.  The 
environment  which  God  has  created  for  the  hu- 
man soul  is  especially  calculated  to  preserve  good 
and  destroy  evil.  The  severities  of  Heaven  lie 
in  the  direction  of  sin,  or  the  backward  step  of 
the  soul.     And  as  good  is  the  only  possible  at- 


THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD.  69 

tribute  which  can  harmonize  with  a  Divine  en- 
vironment, we  may  regard  the  very  arrangement 
of  the  creation  as  a  pledge  of  its  final  triumph. 

Here,  then,  we  have  an  explanation,  and  in 
some  sense  a  justification,  of  the  presence  of 
severity  in  retribution  as  an  element  in  God's 
fatherhood.  It  is  the  force  which  resists  man's 
moral  retrogression.  It  is  the  barrier  which  the 
Heavenly  Father  erects  on  either  side  of  the  way 
to  keep  us  in  a  straight  path.  If  we  will  wander. 
He  provides  that  we  shall  not  be  unwarned  and 
unrestrained;  there  shall  be  some  admonitory 
experience,  something  to  startle  or  deter.  If 
gentle  measures  fail,  then  there  shall  be  sterner 
ones.  It  is  far  better  that  we  should  be  thus 
buffeted  by  God's  severities  than  that  we  should 
go  unhindered  to  destruction.  "Pervading  all 
nature,"  says  Spencer,  "  we  may  see  at  work  a 
stern  discipline  which  is  a  little  cruel  that  it 
may  be  very  kind."  That  sentence  is  a  key  to 
interpret  the  asperities  of  our  moral  experience. 
God  wounds  that  He  may  heal.  He  smites  that 
He  may  uplift.  He  will  save  man  all  the  trouble 
and  the  suffering  that  He  can.  He  will  make 
our  lives  as  happy  as  we  will  allow  Him  to. 
And   whenever  a  human  soul  is  blind  enough 


70  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

to  believe  its  own  way  best,  God  is  not  slow  to 
disclose  to  it  the  awful  blunder  it  has  made. 

And  so,  if  not  now,  yet  sometime,  we  shall 
learn  to  bless  the  Power  which  has  led  us 
through  experiences  which  try  and  hurt  us  with 
their  severity.  It  would  be  our  way  to  give 
up  the  weary  march  of  life,  but  God  whips  us 
into  action  with  a  lash  of  stinging  needs.  We 
would  stray  into  the  fields  of  illicit  pleasure, 
but  we  find  them  thick  with  thistles.  We  might 
be  too  indolent  to  enter  in  at  an  open  heaven,  if 
God  did  not  send  untiring  angels  to  rouse  our 
sluggard  wills,  to  spur  us  to  the  march,  and  to 
chase  our  footsteps  with  a  relentless  persistence 
to  the  heavenly  goal.  These  powers  that  seem 
so  adverse  are  the  sworn  allies  of  love.  Even 
the  iron  hand  of  retribution  is  the  grasp  of  the 
Father  setting  itself  the  faster  as  the  soul  sinks 
in  its  sins.  God  might  have  let  us  go  astray  un- 
checked. He  might  have  held  off  His  restraints 
while  we  went  plunging  down  the  declivities  of 
sin,  from  bad  to  worse,  from  woe  to  woe,  down 
into  infinite  depths  of  ruin.  But  our  Father 
loves  us  too  well  to  lose  us.  When  leniency 
would  be  destruction,  He  is  too  kind  to  spare  us. 
Hence  this  iron  grip,  this  unfaltering  severity, 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  71 

this  galling  stringency  of  restraint,  are  the  attri- 
butes of  the  eternal  and  unalterable  love  of  God. 
And  under  all  these  disguises  the  tender  father- 
hood of  God  works  for  our  good,  —  works  to  re- 
strain and  to  correct ;  works  to  uplift  and  to 
chasten  ;  works  to  breed  in  us  the  abhorrence  of 
evil ;  works  to  tear  away  the  illusions  of  temp- 
tation ;  works  to  conduct  us  through  the  very 
pains  of  purgatory  and  the  pangs  of  perdition, 
into  the  glory  of  the  blessed  life. 

**  And  smce  these  biting  frosts  but  kill 
Some  tares  in  me  which  choke  or  spill 
That  seed  Thou  sow'st,  blest  be  Thy  skill! 

*'  Blest  be  Thy  dew  and  blest  Thy  frost, 
And  happy  I  to  be  so  crost, 
And  cured  by  crosses  at  Thy  cost." 

How  clearly  this  beneficence  of  suffering  ap- 
pears in  the  case  of  our  Ignorance  and  its  con- 
sequences. There  is  no  case  in  which  it  is 
any  harder  to  justify  the  severity  of  Providence 
than  just  here.  Why,  we  ask  ourselves,  should 
men  suffer  consequences  of  which  they  were  ig- 
norant when  they  incurred  them  ?  Why  should 
we  be  in  pain  for  what  we  did  not  know?  A 
man  swallows  a  noxious  herb  which  he  did 
not  know  was  a  poison,  and  suffers  a  linger- 
ing sickness  in  consequence.     Another  ignores 


72  THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD. 

the  laws  of  health,  and  after  an  undue  strain 
from  excessive  work,  falls  a  Victim  to  paraly- 
sis. And  we  secretly  think  a  little  reproachfully 
of  a  constitution  of  things  which  is  so  hard 
upon  ignorance  and  inadvertence.  But  mark  the 
benevolence  underneath  this  apparent  harshness. 
Surely  it  were  a  sad  fate  for  man  if  he  were 
to  live  in  ignorance.  He  never  can  live  his 
best  life  or  reap  his  highest  enjoyments  until 
he  has  overcome  the  drawbacks  of  his  own 
lack  of  knowledge.  Man  must  be  forced  to 
seek  wisdom,  light,  and  truth,  or  he  fails  of 
his  own  heaven.  But  the  fact  that  ignorance 
is  misery  is  the  spur  which  drives  him  out  of 
it.  "  If  to  be  ignorant  were  as  safe  as  to  be 
wise,"  says  a  keen  student  of  human  nature, 
"  no  one  would  become  wise.  And  all  meas- 
ures which  tend  to  put  ignorance  on  a  par 
with  wisdom  inevitably  check  the  growth  of 
wisdom."  And  so  these  penalties  attaching  to 
blindness  teach  us  to  open  our  eyes.  These 
sharp  experiences  of  our  ignorance  whet  all  the 
faculties  to  a  keener  judgment.  Unpitying  as 
it  looks,  it  is  nevertheless  merciful  to  let  men 
suffer  for  their  ignorance,  in  order  that  they 
may  become  wise. 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  73 

Take,  for  example,  the  severity  of  the  ad- 
ministration of  Heaven  in  its  dealings  with 
Poverty.  Why  should  it  fare  so  hard  in  this 
world  with  one  who  is  simply  unthrifty,  or  care- 
less, or  short-sighted,  or  unfortunate?  What 
do  these  distresses  of  poverty  mean  ?  It  is  no 
help  to  the  sympathizing  heart  that  we  lay  the 
burden  of  explanation  on  the  back  of  some  gen- 
eral law,  and  say  that  it  is  the  working  out 
of  some  great  principle  of  supply  and  demand, 
or  the  forcing  of  the  weakest  to  the  wall,  in 
order  that  the  strongest  may  survive.  That 
does  not  ease  the  problem  in  the  least.  Want 
and  cold,  starvation  and  disease,  are  just  as 
gaunt  and  dreadful  after  this  explanation  as 
they  were  before.  But  how  if  the  very  law 
which  bears  so  heavily  upon  the  poor  man 
contain  in  itself  the  secret  of  his  own  eleva- 
tion ?  Remember  how  necessary  it  is  for  man's 
highest  spiritual  good  that  he  should  put  him- 
self beyond  the  condition  of  precarious  life,  of 
living  from  hand  to  mouth.  Note  how  his  soul- 
life  has  grown  as  man  has  been  raised  above 
the  miserable  and  degrading  poverty  of  the 
savage.  Remember  how  this  scourge  of  pov- 
erty, with   its  raging  hungers  and  famines,  its 


74  THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD. 

nakedness  and  cold  and  exposure,  has  been 
the  lash  which  has  driven  our  race  to  become 
tillers  and  builders  and  weavers.  Not  one  of 
the  comforts  and  the  elegancies  of  our  homes 
would  ever  have  existed  if  some  poor  savage 
had  not  been  driven  by  his  sufferings  from 
sun  and  storm  to  build  him  a  rude  shelter, 
and  so  lay  the  corner-stone  of  architecture. 
The  wealth  of  the  world  would  never  have  ex- 
isted if  it  had  not  been  for  the  poverty  of  the 
world.  Can  we  not  see,  in  the  light  of  that 
fact,  that  there  is  a  certain  rude  kindness  even 
in  this  hard  condition  of  poverty?  Is  it  not 
made  so  hard  precisely  in  order  that  men  may 
exert  themselves  to  get  out  of  it  ?  "  The  power 
that  moves  the  world  everywhere,"  says  some 
one,  "  is  the  power  of  need."  It  is  the  goad 
to  labor.  It  is  the  spur  to  zeal.  It  drives  the 
sluggard  afield.  It  rouses  the  careless  to  take 
thought.  It  instructs  the  unskilful.  It  forces 
the  imprudent  to  mend  his  ways. 

XL  —  The  Divine  Fatherhood  and  Human 
Sorrow. 

We  find  moreover  in  human  Sorrow  an  illus- 
tration of  the  principle  of  God's  loving  father- 


THE   FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  75 

hood.  Men  often  misconceive  the  mission  of 
sorrow.  They  misread  its  Divine  meaning. 
They  call  it  punishment;  they  count  it  a  retri- 
bution; they  rebel  against  it  as  an  injustice, 
trying  to  see  in  it  the  recompense  for  some 
fault  of  which  they  are  not  aware.  But  sor- 
row is  not  an  avenger.  It  comes  to  the  pure 
in  heart  as  well  as  to  the  sinful.  The  Saviour 
Himself  was  a  man  of  sorrows.  For  sorrow 
is  God's  refining  fire.  It  is  the  cleanser  of 
hearts;  it  is  sent  to  mellow  the  spirit,  to  pre- 
pare it  for  more  hallowed  life,  to  w^ear  away 
the  resistance  our  hearts  make  to  God's  good 
angels.  Sorrow  is  like  the  frost  that  breaks 
great  bowlders  and  cracks  them  into  dust  for 
the  plant  to  grow  in.  It  is  like  the  floods 
which  rise  in  some  rivers,  inundating  vast 
tracts,  and  bearing  misery  and  ruin  at  first, 
but  leaving  behind  their  deposits  of  rich  soil. 
It  is  like  God's  lightnings  which  scorch  through 
the  air,  but  burn  away  its  mephitic  vapors. 
The  real  solace  of  grief  lies  in  the  sublime 
use  the  Heavenly  Father  makes  of  it  to  en- 
large our  life.  That  is  as  real  and  true  a  fact 
as  that  the  Titans  of  the  material  world  have 
all   been   sworn   to   the   service  of  God's  high 


76  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

ends  of  blessing.  And  that  solace  is  the  proof 
that  the  severity  of  sorrow,  too,  is  the  severity 
of  a  Father's  love. 

Thus  we  might  find  mercy  and  tenderness 
under  all  the  severities  of  this  life.  A  thread 
of  love  runs  through  the  sternest  trials.  Under 
all  the  stern  appearances  of  nature,  unseen  by 
the  shallow  and  the  foolish,  but  known  to  every 
sincere,  loving  heart  which  suffers,  there  lurks 
the  sweetest  blessing  of  life.  Behind  this 
"frowning  providence,"  these  relentless  laws, 
these  sharp  distresses,  our  Father  hides  His 
everlasting  love.  Sorrow  exists  but  to  bless. 
Poverty  does  the  bidding  of  love.  The  hard- 
ships of  ignorance  are  mercies.  The  strictness 
of  God's  requirements  is  fully  matched  by  the 
plenitude  of  the  mercies  which  they  condition. 
Even  His  retributions  deal  their  blows  in  the 
name  of  a  providence  which  works  eternally  for 
man's  salvation.  These  are  the  glorious  truths 
which  shine  out  from  behind  the  clouds,  when 
we  climb  the  peaks  of  faith  and  insight,  and 
overlook  the  widest  fields  of  truth.  From  that 
height  we  see  a  Father's  love  shining  every- 
where. It  illumines  all  the  broad  fields  of  life. 
It  searches  out  tlie  very  deeps  and  lights  them 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  77 

with  hope.  It  knows  no  setting.  It  never  burns 
low.  It  is  from  everlasting  to  everlasting.  It 
is  the  redeeming  ray  which  transfigures  evil, 
and  touches  life's  darkest  experiences  with  a 
holy  comfort. 

It  remains  for  us  to  dwell  upon  one  more 
thought  in  relation  to  this  problem  of  evil  in  the 
creation.  It  is  in  regard  to  the  element  of  time 
which  enters  into  creative  methods,  and  which 
renders  us  peculiarly  liable  to  misjudge  and 
mistake  them.  God  works  in  long  cycles,  and 
we  are  still  in  the  beginning  of  His  mighty 
undertakings. 

The  moral  creation  is  not  finished,  but  pro- 
gressing. Its  walls  are  still  rising.  Its  tow- 
ers still  bear  the  scaffolding  of  the  toil  which 
carries  it  forward.  Therefore  do  not  judge  the 
work  till  it  is  finished.  Remember  how  much 
will  develop  as  the  toil  goes  on.  Consider  the 
things  yet  remaining  undone  which  will  change 
the  aspect  of  the  whole.  Life  is  not  to  be  judged 
by  its  present  phases.  The  present  can  never 
be  properly  estimated  if  taken  by  itself.  All 
things  are  to  be  interpreted  in  the  light  of  their 
results,  their  final  issue,  their  culmination.  Cre- 
ation is  not  to  be  treated  like  a  finished  cathe- 


78  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

dral,  whose  details  are  all  done  ;  much  less  like 
a  crumbling  ruin,  whose  disintegration  has  be- 
gun. It  is  to  be  viewed  rather  as  one  looks  at 
the  life  and  interests  of  an  expanding  city,  or  an 
undeveloped  nation.  It  is  not  done,  but  doing. 
Its  promises  are  as  yet  far  greater  than  its  ful- 
filments. It  must  be  clothed  in  the  light  of 
h-ope ;  for  time  will  prove  the  groundlessness 
of  misgivings  and  fears.  The  outcome  of  it  all 
will  satisfy  yearning  hearts;  and  the  labor  of 
every  honest  soul  toward  the  grand  result  will 
"  have  praise  of  God." 

There  is  no  truth  which  needs  a  more  vigor- 
ous enforcement  upon  the  pessimists  of  our  day 
than  this  general  principle.  There  is  no  answer 
to  their  complaints  and  criticisms  about  the 
creation  except  in  this  truth.  The  great  mistake 
of  those  who  seek  to  undermine  the  belief  in  the 
Divine  fatherhood  is  in  treating  this  world  as 
if  it  were  a  finished  product,  its  aims  all  fully 
developed,  its  resources  all  laid  bare,  its  develop- 
ment only  a  circular  progress  in  which  experi- 
ence repeats  itself,  and  no  more.  But  if  anything 
may  be  regarded  as  well  established  in  fact  as  well 
as  in  faith,  it  is  the  scientific  doctrine  that  this  is 
a  creation  in  process  of  evolution.     It  is  a  grow- 


THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD.  79 

ing  crop,  a  web  in  the  loom,  a  tale  half  told,  a 
picture  but  just  sketched  in.  Even  those  who 
refuse  to  admit  that  creation  shows  any  signs 
of  intelligence  will  allow  that  the  bearing  and 
influence  of  things  present  on  one  another  can- 
not be  well  understood  until  they  have  worked 
out  to  their  results,  in  some  future  time.  And 
if  it  be  conceded  that  there  may  after  all  be  an 
intelligent  purpose  in  Nature,  —  a  plan  by  which 
all  things  are  working,  —  then  by  so  much  the 
more  must  we  perpetually  hold  judgment  in 
suspense  upon  some  parts  of  this  present  life. 

When  an  artist  has  projected  a  great  picture, 
when  he  has  completed  all  his  studies,  conceived 
his  plan,  and  decided  upon  his  methods,  he  pro- 
ceeds to  make  his  preliminary  sketches.  He 
draws  his  ^various  figures,  in  such  postures  and 
with  such  general  expression  as  he  means  them 
to  have  in  the  canvas  where  he  will  finally  place 
them.  They  are  roughly  done  at  first,  and  taken 
by  themselves  suggest  no  adequate  notion  of  what 
the  general  composition  will  be.  Perhaps  he 
even  paints  each  sketch  with  some  elaboration. 
But  even  then  it  would  be  impossible  to  make 
a  fair  estimate  of  any  of  these  carefully  studied 
figures,  or  pronounce  upon  their  coloring ;   be- 


80  THE  FATHEHHOOD  OF  GOD. 

'cause  in  the  mind  of  the  artist  every  one  of  these 
details  has  a  definite  relation  to  every  other,  and 
neither  face  nor  figure,  outline  nor  color,  can  be 
understood  except  as  it  is  thought  of  in  connec- 
tion with  all  the  rest.  So  the  real  value  of  all 
these  separate  particulars  cannot  be  estimated 
alone.  But  when  the  artist  begins  to  draw 
them  in  together,  when  he  groups  these  sketches 
on  one  surface,  when  he  blends  the  colors,  and 
combines  them  in  relation  to  the  lights  and 
shadows  of  the  picture,  then  one  may  begin 
to  see,  and  not  till  then,  all  that  the  studies 
contained.  They  can  only  be  interpreted  by 
their  final  combination,  their  place  in  the  finished 
picture. 

Or  —  to  take  an  illustration  still  more  analo- 
gous to  the  case  we  are  seeking  to  make  plain, 
because  it  is  a  part  of  a  scheme  which  is  never 
finished,  but  always  going  on  —  let  any  man  of 
affairs  undertake  some  large  and  complicated 
enterprise  of  profit,  like  the  building  of  an  ex- 
tensive railroad  line.  Now,  in  order  to  make  a 
fair  judgment  of  the  various  steps  of  that  work, 
it  is  necessary  always  to  keep  in  mind  its  end. 
There  are  many  stages  in  the  progress  of  the 
enterprise  when  it  seemed  more  like  a  work  of 


THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD.  81 

demolition  than  one  of  construction.  The  claims 
upon  public  and  private  lands  for  location,  the 
cutting  away  of  forests,  the  digging  down  of 
hills,  the  rendering  of  property  unfit  for  its  old 
uses,  —  all  these  seem  like  undoing  and  depre- 
ciating and  destroying.  The  debt,  too,  incurred 
for  construction,  the  mortgages  given  on  this 
newly  made  property,  —  is  it  not  a  thriftless  use 
of  money  to  put  it  into  this  highway  in  a  wilder- 
ness ?  Is  it  wise  to  undertake  all  these  risks, 
expend  all  this  treasure,  devote  all  this  thought, 
care,  anxiety  ?  The  one  answer  of  the  capitalist, 
of  the  engineer,  of  the  managers  of  the  scheme, 
is  simply,  "  Wait  and  see."  You  must  wait  till 
you  see  these  untenanted  fields  taken  up  by  the 
thronging  immigrants.  You  must  wait  till  these 
streams  begin  to  pull  at  the  wheels  of  factories, 
these  plains  to  turn  yellow  with  the  ripening 
grain,  these  scattering  settlements  to  grow  to 
hamlets  and  towns  and  thriving  cities.  You 
must  wait  till  the  heavy-laden  trains  toil  across 
the  country  with  great  freights  of  produce,  and 
come  back  bearing  the  supplies  for  these  fresh 
communities.  That  is  the  answer  to  all  your 
queries.  That  proves  that  the  work  was  one  of 
construction,  —  that  it  built  up   and   increased 


82  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

values,  and  enlarged  the  utilities  of  the  country. 
It  proves  that  the  investment  was  directed 
toward  a  genuine  profit.  It  shows  how  well  be- 
stowed was  all  the  thought  of  the  financier  and 
the  builder.  The  purpose  of  that  early  work 
does  not  appear  till  late  in  the  process  of  the 
scheme  ;  but  when  it  does  come,  it  explains  and 
justifies  everything  preliminary. 

Now,  are  not  these  cases  quite'  analogous  to 
the  moral  universe,  or,  more  exactly,  the  uni- 
verse in  its  moral  relations  ?  These,  too,  in  any 
fair  construction,  must  be  viewed  according  to 
their  issue,  and  not  according  to  their  temporary 
and  transitional  aspects.  We  must  not  expect 
the  solution  of  these  mysteries  of  life  and  being 
in  this  twilight  season  of  our  existence.  We 
must  wait  "  until  the  day  break  and  the  shadows 
flee  away."  The  gospel  names  the  only  ground 
upon  which  the  past  and  present  of  this  weary 
world  can  be  reconciled  to  our  tolerance.  "  Judge 
nothing,"  says  Paul,  "  before  the  time,  until  the 
Lord  come."  ^  Remember,  he  seems  to  say,  you 
are  beholding  only  a  transitory  and  provisional 
state  of  things.  The  whole  scheme  of  life 
centres  in  and  takes  its  meaning  from  life's  high 

1  1  Corinthians  iv.  5. 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  83 

purpose.  The  means  and  the  process  are  only 
to  be  read  in  the  light  of  the  achievement  of  the 
Creator's  end.  The  whole  of  the  long  and  labo- 
rious progress  wrought  out  witli  such  expendi- 
ture of  thought,  such  pangs  and  agony,  such 
suffering  of  the  flesh,  such  anguish  of  spirit,  is 
but  the  prelude  to  creation's  true  life,  —  the  im- 
parting of  the  life  of  God  to  His  creation  as  fast 
and  as  far  as  it  can  receive  the  same,  till  it 
shall  enjoy  the  fulness  of  a  divine  spirit  in  that 
day  when  the  kingdoms  of  this  world  shall  be 
subject  to  the  will  and  spirit  of  love,  —  that 
wished-for  time  which  men  doubtfully  expect  in 
the  "  millennium  ; "  that  epoch  which  the  gospel 
calls  "  the  coming  of  the  Lord." 

XII.  —  Divine  Fatherhood  and  Human 
Destiny. 

It  is  upon  the  sublime  truth  of  the  Divine 
fatherhood  that  we  build  the  faith  in  man's  final 
holiness.  Because  God's  nature  is  unalterably 
love,  and  because  man's  birthright  is  inalienably 
sonship,  it  follows  that  his  destiny  must  be  one 
of  good  and  holiness.  Upon  any  line  of  logic 
from  this  great  thought,  we  come  inevitably 
to  the  conclusion  that  mankind  is  destined  to 


84  THE   FATHERHOOD   OF   GOD. 

redemption  from  the  thraldom  of  sin  and  its 
sequences.  Justice,  mercy,  and  love,  the  essen- 
tial elements  of  fatherhood,  all  stand  pledged  to 
do  the  best  for  man,  and  to  secure  him  from  the 
awful  destruction  of  an  endless  career  of  sinful 
ness.  Once  accept  the  truth  of  the  Divine  father- 
hood in  its  fulness,  —  once  realize  the  sublime 
significance  that  it  gives  to  the  human  race,  and 
to  all  the  life  of  that  race,  —  and  it  becomes  im- 
possible to  doubt  that  God  has  in  view  a  destiny 
of  good  for  all  His  children.  It  is  impossible  to 
conceive  of  the  Infinite  Father  as  conferring  life 
upon  children,  in  the  full  knowledge  that  by 
their  own  acts  they  would  make  that  life  a 
curse.  It  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  this  Father 
as  making  the  fate  of  eternity  turn  upon  the 
choice  of  these  brief  earthly  years.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  conceive  of  Him  as  limiting  His  interest 
in  man,  and  his  efforts  for  him,  to  the  life  this 
side  the  grave.  It  is  impossible  to  conceive  that 
He  would  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  the  cry  for  pardon 
which  might  come  even  from  the  deeps  of  hell. 
It  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  Him  as  content 
with  any  vindication  of  His  power  or  any  triumph 
of  His  kinocdom  which  does  not  include  the  rec- 
onciliation  of  His  children,  and  their  complete 


THE  FATHERHOOD   OF   GOD.  85 

recoverj  to  the  joys  and  the  duties  of  their  in- 
heritance.    It  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  any 
or  all  these  things,  because  they  are  inconsistent 
with  a  fatherly  character.     They  are  utterly  at 
variance  with  any  conception  of  paternal  nature 
which  leaves  that  nature  within  the  limits  of  our 
human  definitions.    For  every  human  conception 
of  fatherhood   recognizes    it   as   a   relationship 
under  law.     It  carries  with  it  duties  as  well  as 
privileges,  —  duties  the  highest,  the  noblest  pos- 
sible  to  man ;   but   obligations   still   the   more 
sacred,   as  they   involve   these  very  privileges. 
It  is  understood  by  all  enlightened  minds  that 
the  father  assumes  a  responsibility  and  gives  a 
tacit  pledge  in  the  very  act  of  becoming  a  parent. 
He  is  under  bonds  to  his  child.     That  obliga- 
tion is  self-imposed.     He  is  in  honor  held  to 
fulfil  it. 

But  now  we  ask,  is  it  an  audacious  or  an 
unwarrantable  thought  of  God,  to  say  that  as 
our  Creator,  as  the  Author  of  our^  being.  He  has 
assumed  a  bond,  and  out  of  His  own  infinite 
free  will  undertaken  certain  obligations  to  His 
offspring  ?  It  is  not  claimed  that  it  lies  in  the 
power  of  man  to  put  God  under  obligation.  But 
it  certainly  lies  in  the  power  of  God  to  bind 


86  THE  FATHERHOOD  OE  GOD. 

Himself.  And  it  is  onl}^  a  proper  tribute  to 
His  infinite  righteousness  and  justice,  and  not 
in  the  faintest  degree  an  irreverent  assumption 
of  knowledge  in  divine  things,  to  say  that  when 
He  created  man  in  His  ow^n  image,  made  him 
His  child  and  not  simply  His  creature,  gave  him 
a  self-conscious  soul,  and  a  nature  capable  of  the 
most  exquisite  joy  in  finding  its  destiny  as  well 
as  the  most  exquisite  torture  in  missing  that  end, 
He  put  His  own  most  adorable  nature  under 
bonds  to  see  to  it  that  He  secured  to  every  one 
of  these  conscious  children  of  His  the  power  to 
attain  that  joy  and  avoid  that  terrible  disaster 
and  loss.  Set  aside  now  every  consideration  in 
this  matter  except  the  single  one  that  God  made 
us,  that  He  gave  us  all  the  powers  that  we  pos- 
sess, including  that  awful  faculty,  so  fraught 
with  our  own  weal  or  woe,  —  the  faculty  of  will- 
ing good  or  evil,  —  must  we  not  say  that  by  that 
sole  and  separate  fact  the  Almighty  God  stands, 
self-bound,  held  by  His  own  infinite  justice  and 
love,  to  bring  us  to  our  own  and  lead  us  into  life 
and  joy  everlasting  ?  Righteousness  must  mean 
the  same  in  God  as  it  does  in  man.  There  are 
not  two  kinds  of  benevolence  and  of  justice,  of 
rectitude  and  of  love,  in  this  universe, —  one  for 


THE  rATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  87 

God   and   another   for  man.      The  mercy  God 
shows  a  sinner  is  the  same  in  quality  as  that 
which  He  enjoins  upon  His  children.     The  love 
He  bears  us  is  the  same  in  kind  as  that  we  bear 
each  other.     Else  is  there  no  meaning  in  the 
traits  we  ascribe  to  Him,  or  the  honor  we  pay  to 
His  name.     And  to  say  that  it  is  fair,  or  just,  or 
loving  in  God  to  endow  man  with  a  gift  in  whose 
exercise  man  shall  work  his  own  eternal  doom, 
is  to  give  quite  other  meaning  to  those  virtues 
and  holy  traits  from  what  they  convey  when  we 
apply  them  to  ourselves.     It  may  or  may  not 
be  "  an  assumption  unproved  and  unprovable " 
that  "  God  is  bound  by  the  perfections  of  His 
nature  to  make  all  men  happy ; "  but  will  any 
man  undertake  to  prove  to  the  satisfaction  of  a 
Christian  mind  and  heart  that  it  is  a  perfectly 
fair  and  just  procedure  to  endow  man  with  a 
nature  so  frail  and  peccable  that  it  broke  down 
at  the  start,  and  has  been  working  but  imper- 
fectly ever  since,  and  then  to  doom  him  to  eter- 
nal torments  for  not  getting  it  reduced  to  order 
and  regularity  during  the  brief  years  of  a  mortal 
life  ?   God  is  bound  by  the  perfections  of  His 
nature  not  to  make  a  being  whose  very  constitu- 
tion renders  it  morally  certain  that  it  will  be' 


88  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

unhappy,  not  for  a  few  brief  years  but  forever 
and  forever.  To  deliberately  organize  a  soul 
for  a  career  of  woe  would  be  to  lack  the  very 
first  elements  of  affectionate  paternity. 

We  need  not  try  to  discover  the  workings  of 
the  Infinite  Mind,  or  attempt  a  psychology  or  a 
system  of  ethics  for  Divinity.  But  He  wlio 
taught  us  to  say  "  Our  Father,"  and  gave  us  the 
sweet  domestic  thought  of  God  which  we  find  in 
the  parable  of  the  Prodigal,  surely  warrants  us 
in  thinking  of  Him  as  working  in  fatherly  ways 
and  governed  by  motives  at  least  as  high  and 
lovino;  as  those  that  rule  the  hearts  of  earthly 
fathers.  And  can  we  think  that  the  loving  God, 
knowing  the  awful  possibilities  of  the  life  of 
each  separate  soul,  would  have  called  us  into 
being  unless  He  had  foreseen  that  at  last  each 
one  of  us  would  come  to  good  and  peace  and  joy  ? 
It  sometimes  puts  a  terrible  strain  upon  our  faith 
in  God's  fatherhood  to  contemplate  the  suffer- 
ing with  which  this  earth  is  so  full ;  to  see  the 
millions  of  men  and  women  who  come  into  this 
world  only  to  be  buffeted  by  its  adversities  and 
torn  by  its  severities,  dragged  through  its  hells, 
and  hurried  down  to  the  dark  deaths  of  the  sin- 
ful.    And  the  only  thought  wliich  saves  us  from 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  89 

crying  out  of  our  sympathizing  hearts  that  God 
has  made  a  fearful  mistake  in  creating  men  is 
the  faith  which  holds  us,  in  spite  of  all  this  mis- 
ery, that  God  is  leading  man  through  the  shad- 
ows to  the  stars,  that  strife  and  sorrow  are 
growing  less,  and  man  is  being  reclaimed  and 
fitted  for  a  true  sonship  with  all  its  joys.  In 
that  hope  one  can  go  into  the  meanest  hovel 
where  poverty  grovels  in  rags ;  one  can  go  to 
the  most  miserable  wreck  of  a  noble  life,  and 
say  in  faith,  — 

*'  The  wrong  that  pains  my  soul  below 
I  dare  not  throne  above  ; 
I  know  not  of  His  hate,  —  I  know 
His  goodness  and  His  love." 

But  if  tliere  be  no  hope  at  the  end;  if  God 
has  no  alternative  but  to  send  these  hapless 
souls  from  a  birth  into  sin,  on  to  an  eternity  of 
woe ;  if  the  aimless  suiferings  of  this  life  are  but 
the  prelude  to  sufferings  in  another  existence 
that  are  endless  as  well  as  aimless,  —  then  may 
we  exclaim,  "  Would  God  we  had  never  been, 
rather  than  be  and  suffer  all  these  hopeless  ills ! 
It  had  been  better  for  us  that  we  had  never  been 
born ;  better  if  God  had  left  us  in  the  silence 


90  THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD. 

and  the  void  whence  we  came  forth ;  better  that 
we  had  never  known  the  powers  and  the  capaci- 
ties of  conscious  life,  than  that,  having  received 
them,  they  should  be  turned  into  a  miserable  and 
a  ceaseless  curse.  If  God  has  no  mercy  for  the 
end.  He  might  have  had  in  the  beginning." 

But  thanks  to  the  revelation  made  in  Jesus 
Christ,  God  has  vindicated  His  fatherly  love,  and 
given  assurance  of  His  merciful  grace,  in  the 
pledge  He  has  sealed  to  make  us  all  alive  in 
Christ.  He  will  be  true  to  all  the  obligations  of 
fatherhood.  He  will  leave  nothing  undone,  no 
labor  and  no  sacrifice,  to  vindicate  and  prove 
His  care  for  His  own.  Once  our  Father  he  is 
always  our  Father,  and  the  eternal  years  will 
not  sunder  nor  weaken  the  tie  that  makes  us 
His.  And  that  truth  is  the  most  telling,  the 
most  persuasive,  the  most  saving  that  ever  was 
preached  to  the  children  of  men.  No  moral 
force  that  ever  was  brought  to  bear  upon  human 
life  has  exerted  upon  it  such  influence  to  save, 
to  regenerate,  and  to  purify,  as  the  truth  of  God's 
fatherly  love  revealed  in  the  sacrifice  of  Jesus 
Christ.  The  ancient  world  was  always  at  a  loss 
to  find  a  motive  which  should  stir  men  out  of 
their  sins,  and  into  the  religious  life.     The  world 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  91 

found  the  missing  impulse  when  Christ,  to  mani- 
fest our  Father's  love,  came  and  died  upon  the 
cross.  That  act  was  at  once  the  evidence  and 
the  illustration  of  the  love  of  God.  It  was  an 
object-lesson  in  the  spiritual  economy.  And  it 
touched  the  heart  of  the  world.  It  has  always 
touched  it.  It  is  the  power  which  God  meant 
should  touch  it.  It  was  a  revelation  to  man  of 
his  true  spiritual  birthright;  and  it  filled  him 
with  a  desire  to  claim  his  own. 

XIII.  —  The  Divine  Fatherhood  and  Human 
Conduct. 

It  is  a  cheering  thought  to  him  who  loves  this 
mighty  truth  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  that  it 
is  just  beginning  to  assert  its  power  as  a  motive 
in  conduct.  The  most  intelligent  and  experi- 
enced workers  with  weak  and  sinful  men  have 
learned  that  nothing  converts  men,  nothing  wins 
them  to  God,  like  the  simple  declaration  of  the 
truth  that  they  are  God's  children,  partakers  of 
His  love,  objects  of  His  mercy,  and  capable  of 
becoming  in  character  what  they  already  are  in 
nature.  There  is  no  appeal  so  strong  as  this, 
none  that  so  invariably  reaches  and  moves  the 
human  heart. 


92  THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD. 

TVlien  all  other  appeals  to  man's  selfish  and 
corrupted  heart  have  failed,  there  is  one  thought 
that  does  not  fail,  and  that  will  not  fail,  at  last 
to  reach  every  sinful  soul.  You  may  go  to  men 
with  warnings,  and  not  move  them.  You  may 
hold  over  them  the  terrors  of  the  law,  and  only 
harden  them.  You  may  appeal  to  their  selfish- 
ness, and  never  rouse  in  them  a  particle  of  aver- 
sion to  themselves  and  their  own  debased  livins:. 
But  many  a  time  when  all  else  has  failed  to 
touch  human  hearts,  and  it  seems  as  if,  for 
this  life  at  least,  the  soul  must  go  on  its 
wretched  and  rebellious  way,  there  is  dropped 
some  word  that  starts  the  sense  of  sonship,  — 
some  thought  comes  home  to  the  hard  heart 
that  quickens  that  dead  and  withered  feeling 
of  relationship  to  God,  and  a  claim  on  the  bless- 
ings of  the  great  family  privileges  and  rights. 
And  when  that  nerve  is  stirred  it  is  not  far 
away  to  the  spot  where  the  wanderer  will  meet 
its  God  in  the  way,  and  make  a  willing  surren- 
der to  its  Father.  It  often  happens  that  the  aged 
man,  sick  and  suffering,  wandering  in  his  mind 
and  uncertain  in  his  memories,  goes  back  past 
all  the  years,  and  seems  to  be  living  again  the 
years  of  his  boyhood.     He  is  once  more  a  child 


THE  FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  93 

in  the  old  home.  He  calls  the  names  of  his  play- 
mates. He  wanders  in  the  old  haunts,  roams  the 
old  fields,  plays  the  old  games.  He  has  lost  all 
hold  upon  the  years,  be  they  good  or  be  they  bad, 
which  lie  between  him  and  those  early  days. 
Everything  else  has  slipped  away  from  him. 
But  the  one  thing  which  memory  will  not  let 
go  is  the  thought  of  childhood,  the  ties  which 
knit  themselves  there,  and  the  loves  formed  then, 
which  have  lasted  through  all  the  long  years  of 
labor  and  of  loss.  And  so  when  a  human  soul 
lies  in  the  weakness  and  exhaustion  of  its  life- 
long sins,  and  is  insensible  to  every  call  that 
would  rouse  it  from  the  stupor  of  degradation, 
there  is  one  voice,  one  summons,  which  seems 
to  set  all  the  heartstrings  in  motion,  and  to 
reach  the  one  instinct  which  cannot  be  removed 
from  the  soul,  of  sonship  to  God. 

And  what  follows  when  this  perception  of  the 
eternal  relationship  is  once  aroused  in  the  heart  ? 
What  are  the  consequences  of  a  recognition  of 
God's  fatherhood  and  our  sonship  ?  There  are 
two  faces  to  this  truth ;  and  while  the  one  looks 
toward  God,  there  is  another  and  equally  mo- 
mentous one  which  looks  directly  at  us.  We 
need  have  no  fear  but  that  through  all  eternity 
our  Father  will  be  true  to  His  obligations,  per- 


94  THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD. 

form  every  duty  and  guard  every  interest  of  His 
children.  We  are  safe  in  His  hands,  and  we 
have  nothing  to  fear  from  Him.  For  whether 
He  smite  or  whether  He  heal,  whether  He  act 
or  whether  He  wait ;  whether  He  come  to  us 
with  tenderness  or  in  the  fire  of  His  wrath,  "  He 
doeth  all  things  Avell."  He  is  eternally  true  to 
His  fatherhood. 

But  are  we  as  faithful  to  our  sonship  ?  Do  we 
serve  God  as  faithfully  as  God  serves  us  ?  Do 
we  give  as  He  gives  ?  God  acknowledges  His  re- 
lationship to  us.  But  do  we,  even  while  we  feel 
and  believe  that  we  bear  God's  image,  rise  to  the 
height  of  the  duties  which  that  fact  lays  upon 
every  one  of  us?  Every  truth  has  an  ethical 
bearing.  Some  duty  grows  out  of  every  fact  of 
the  moral  nature.  And  the  most  imperative,  the 
most  exacting,  the  most  sweeping  truth  in  its  re- 
lation to  the  human  conscience,  is  that  of  man's 
sonship  to  God.  What  does  a  child  owe  to  a  par- 
ent ?  What  does  dependence  owe  to  the  strength 
on  which  it  hangs?  What  does  feebleness  owe 
to  the  care  which  nurses  it,  and  ignorance  to 
the  wisdom  which  guides  and  instructs,  and 
waywardness  to  the  heart  that  restrains  and 
chastens  ?  What  does  helplessness  owe  to  love  ? 
What  docs  the  transgressor  owe  to  the  heart 


THE   FATHERHOOD  OF  GOD.  95 

of  mercy  and  of  pardon?  That,  all  that  and 
more,  man  owes  to  his  Father.  We  cannot  read 
that  fact  of  the  spiritual  world  and  shut  our 
eyes  to  its  personal  import.  The  light  that 
streams  from  it  illuminates  conscience  as  well  as 
intellect;  it  reveals  a  duty  as  well  as  a  hope. 
You  are  a  son  of  God ;  but  are  you  living  like 
one?  You  belong  to  the  great  family  ;  but  have 
you  done  your  duty  by  your  brother,  or  your 
father  ?  You  are  entitled  to  your  inheritance  as 
an  heir  of  life ;  have  you  ever  claimed  your 
own  ?  You  are  debtor  to  the  Father,  who  begot 
you,  reared  you,  endowed  you,  educated  you,  and 
still  holds  your  portion  in  trust  for  you ;  have 
you  ever  paid  a  farthing  of  your  debt,  by  grati- 
tude, by  the  giving  of  your  love  in  return,  by 
obedience,  or  by  sacrifice  ? 

There  is  no  humiliation  in  this  life  more  com- 
plete than  that  which  overtakes  the  man  who 
finds  he  has  been  unjust  to  his  friend;  has  re- 
paid love  with  suspicion,  benefits  with  coldness, 
and  generous  interest  with  aversion.  When  the 
blinded  and  perverse  heart  sees  what  it  has 
done,  it  bends  in  the  heaviness  of  grief  and  of 
mortification.  One  does  not  like  to  look  into  the 
face  which  has  been  thus  repelled,  and  feel  that 


96.  THE  FATHERHOOD   OF   GOD. 

life  has  been 'one  long,  sad  mistake.  And  worst 
of  all  is  the  shame  which  befalls  when  the  one 
who  has  been  wronged  is  a  father,  who  has  been 
robbed  of  filial  tenderness, -cheated  of  that  love 
which  was  his  due,  kept 'out  of  the  sj-mpathy  and 
appreciative  recognition  'which  is  the  best  re- 
ward of  his  heart  for  all  its  denials  and  its 
labors.  Can  we  imagine  any  remorse  more  cut- 
ting, than  that  which  pierces  the  heart  of  him 
who  has  been  a  false,  a  hard,  a  wayward  son, 
coming  at  last  to  a  consciousness  of  his  crime  ? 
And  yet  that,  and  worse,  is  the  fate  of  every  soul 
which  forgets  its  duties  to  the  Heavenly  Father, 
turns  its  back  on  God,  and  cheats  Him  of  the 
honor  and  the  love  which  is  His  due.  For  our 
disobedience  is  robbery  from  God.  Estranged 
from  Him,  we  wrong  His  love;  and  when  we 
come  to  ourselves,  it  is  to  find  that  we  have  been 
sinning  against  our  dearest  Friend.  Thank  God, 
He  has  forgiveness  for  even  this  wrong,  and 
when  we  turn  us  again  to  His  face.  He  meets 
with  outstretched  arms  His  returning  sons  and 
daughters. 


Uuiverbity  Press  :  John  Wilson  &  Son,  Cambridge, 


Theoloqic.ll  Seminary-Speer 


1    1012  01093  5320 


DATE  DUE 

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